PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... the scuba-diving historian and philosopher of science tackles these questions with eloquent boldness ... Godfrey-Smith recounts close encounters with marine fauna, gleaned from years of diving off the Australian coast. These have an electric immediacy: He’s often as much observed as observing ... The passages in Metazoa on those dynamic features, such as synchronized \'electrical breathing\' in neurons, are gripping—as are the discussions of pain in hermit crabs, split-brain cognition and REM sleep in cuttlefish. The sheer number of exploratory pathways, the author admits, give the book a \'tentacular\' form. I also found one or two of the philosophical passages somewhat viscous—like mud-wrestling an octopus.
Bradley Garrett
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of Books[Garrett] grasp of the vertical world is formidable ... mindboggling in scope and depth, with ample endnotes.
Ben Ehrenreich
RaveLos Angeles Review of Books... exceptional ... Ehrenreich is a bold choreographer, skipping from black holes and Mayan myths to the \'breathtaking racism\' of Hegel and mystic wheels in the stories of Borges ... compelling stories ... The world is written, Ehrenreich shows, but we need to find the language to fully decipher its wonders and our place within them.
Edward Tenner
PositiveNature...in this perceptive study ... The Silicon Valley dream of a frictionless existence is failing because ethical, political and social elements were factored in poorly, spawning issues such as flawed algorithms. Sympathetically critiquing the work of others in this arena, including Nicholas Carr and Cathy O’Neill, Tenner calls for a strategy that blends intuition and experience with high technology.
