angie420's Full Review: Marilyn Vos Savant and Leonore Fleischer - Brain B...
Have you ever heard of Marilyn vos Savant? She is in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the highest IQ ever recorded. With 100 being an average score, she scored a whopping 230. She also writes a Q & A article in Parade Magazine, which I have enjoyed for about ten years now. (If you aren’t familiar with Parade, you can find it in your Sunday newspaper) She is smart, wise and humorous. If you like brain-teasers, she has some of the best.
She is also married to Robert Jarvik, MD, creator of the first artificial heart that bears his name.
This book is about exercising your brain. She literally compares it to beginning an exercise program. You start out slow and easy, then gradually build yourself up. This is a twelve week program designed to work different parts of your brain, straightening your mind just like you would your biceps.
Marilyn uses her extensive knowledge to explain the brain to you in terms you can understand. She tells you it is important to be familiar with the different parts of your brain and its purpose. She also offers an excellent explanation of IQ tests. A full history and each ‘subject’ of the test is fully explained and I found it very interesting.
The book is designed to take 12 weeks to read. Each chapter offers in detail explanation of every form of thinking you could imagine. The way it is spread throughout the book however, makes it easy to understand and follow. Marilyn actually breaks down different forms of thinking and
intelligence, and explains them one by one. She is extremely insightful and backs up everything she says with scientific data.
There are many quotes and reports from many people on each aspect of her subjects. You not only get her perspective on intelligence, but the scientific communities as well. I can not say enough about these parts of the book. If you are a college student, or want to do a study on this subject, this is an excellent resource book for you.
At the end of each day’s lessons, you have an exercise or brain builder to do. For me, this is where the book fell apart.
The first few exercises are down right corny. Like looking at yourself in the mirror and visually divide the parts of your brain, and identifying them. It doesn’t matter if your locations are correct, just knowing the different aspects of the brain and being able to distinguish them is fine. I
understand this concept, but I find the mirror unnecessary, since I have to actually imagine my brain anyway. I don’t need to see my face to do that.
I also had trouble looking at a picture of myself and pretending I was someone else. Looking at yourself and observing signs of intelligence. I just didn’t find this necessary.
She tells you to look at yourself in the perspective of friends, relatives, co-workers, etc. Read the newspaper and imagine your the subject of the article and think about the decision you would have to make and the things that would go through your mind. Following her exercises, you will
spend a lot of time looking in the mirror and basically daydreaming.
Other brain builders are different. Some involve the way of thinking when you are presented with a brain teaser or trick question. She answers the question and offers you different ways to look at the problem and think about it.
For example, she gives you a simple problem. Sam has $200, spends half of it on a pair of shoes and a shirt. The shoes cost a third of the money he spent. How much was the shirt?
The answer is probably easy to come by to you. However, she tells you instead of thinking of fractions and lines of numbers, instead, imagine a stack of money and a guy shopping around for shoes and a shirt.
For most people, this involves a completely new way of thinking. It requires extreme mental discipline and a constant conscious effort. If you want to actually use the tips in this book, it is my opinion that it will take much more than 12 weeks to do this overhaul to your way of thinking.
I feel that truly following this book the way it was intended, requires given intelligence, discipline,
patience, and a good imagination. It will also be an ongoing exercise that should stay with you forever.
Whether you choose to adopt this new way of thinking or not, this book offers many brain-teasers and situations designed to make you think. For example:
BRAIN BUILDER #140 - IMPROVING YOUR PERSPECTIVE
“Exercise: If you were a direct descendant of Julius Caesar, how many other descendants come between you and him? Quickly now, don’t stop to think about it; don’t figure it out with pencil and paper; just venture a guess. How many great-great grandmothers would there be between now
and those far-off days of antiquity?
Did you say hundreds? Most people do. But stop and consider your perception of history and its perspective. Our western culture commonly accepts three generations per century, or 33 1/3 years per generation... ‘Antiquity’, which seems lost in the mist of millennia, actually wasn’t so long ago -only 61 33-year-olds stand between you and it. In the true perspective of human existence, Julius Caesar lived, loved, and died only yesterday.”
In conclusion, I think anyone would enjoy this book and find it interesting. However, it takes a person who is already intellectually in tune to truly use the book as it was intended. Again, if you are looking for excellent data on the brain, intelligence or IQ tests, this book will definitely be an asset to you.
The smartest person in the world has written the ultimate illustrated how-to book, a program designed to improve our most powerful natural tool--the b...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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