Some responses to The Master and his Emissary
'A landmark new book ... it tells a story you need to hear, of where we live now.'
--- Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
'Few books this year can match this one in breadth of erudition, scope, and ambition ... a highly stimulating read.'
--- 'Best Books of 2009' choice, Barnes & Noble
'A giant in his vital field shows convincingly that the degeneracy of the West springs from our failure to manage the binary division of our brains.'
--- 'Book of the Year' choice, David Cox, Evening Standard
--- Winner of the Scientific & Medical Network Book Prize 2009
--- Short-listed for the Bristol Festival Of Ideas Book Prize 2010
--- Long-listed for the Royal Society's Prize for Science Books, the world's most prestigious award for science writing, 2010
'A scintillating intelligence.'
--- Anonymous reviewer, The Economist
‘This is a very remarkable book … McGilchrist, who is both an experienced psychiatrist and a shrewd philosopher, looks at the relation between our two brain-hemispheres in a new light, not just as an interesting neurological problem but as a crucial shaping factor in our culture … clear, penetrating, lively, thorough and fascinating … splendidly thought-provoking … I couldn’t put it down.'
--- Professor Mary Midgley, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy, Newcastle University, writing in The Guardian
'A beautifully written, erudite, fascinating and adventurous book. It embraces a prodigious range of enquiry, from neurology to psychology, from philosophy to primatology, from myth to history to literature. It goes from the microstructure of the brain to great epochs of Western civilisation, confidently and readably. One turns its five hundred pages - a further hundred are dense with notes and references in tiny print - as if it were an adventure story … McGilchrist tells us about the rapidly evolving technologies and experimental work in fascinating and lucid detail.'
--- Professor AC Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, writing in the Literary Review
'McGilchrist’s careful analysis of how brains work is a veritable tour de force, gradually and skilfully revealed. I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience …’
--- Professor WF Bynum, Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at University College, London, and former head of the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Centre, writing in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
'A remarkable book…[McGilchrist] is immensely erudite. He writes with great clarity, and while the book develops an argument it is also a treasure chest of fascinating detail and memorable quotation. Its thesis is profoundly interesting: most readers who enter here with time to spend will be richly rewarded … the effort to make sense of the totality of our lives in terms of brain function is exhilarating and worthwhile.’
--- Professor Adam Zeman, Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology at the Peninsula Medical School and School of Psychology, author of Consciousness: a User's Guide and A Portrait of the Brain, writing in Standpoint Magazine
‘It is no exaggeration to say that this quite remarkable book will radically change the way you understand the world and yourself … Reading this book, to which you will want to return on a regular basis (one reading cannot possibly exhaust its multifaceted insights) will help you better understand reality and the way we experience and represent it. It is a genuine tour de force, a monumental achievement – I can think of no one else who could have conceived, let alone written, a book of such penetrating brilliance.'
--- David Lorimer, Chair of the Wrekin Trust and Director of the Scientific and Medical Network, writing in the Scientific and Medical Network Review
‘I was not asked to write this review; I asked to be allowed to. I ordered my copy immediately after reading Mary Midgley’s Guardian review and waited impatiently for it to arrive. When it did, I read it in every spare moment I had, and a lot I hadn’t, ending up with underlinings and sometimes manic exclamation marks pencilled onto almost every page …Iain McGilchrist’s qualifications for his massive undertaking are ideal, perhaps unique … From Heraclitus to Plato, from the Renaissance to the Reformation, from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and so to Modernism, McGilchrist’s grasp of this vast field, and the depth of his philosophical and artistic insight, is staggering … It underpins, validates, explains a whole slew of intuitions about general practice and life which I have felt and tried to express in (inevitably) inadequate words and which I know are widely shared.’
--- Dr James Willis, Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, writing in the British Journal of General Practice
‘Utterly amazing – probably the most exciting book I’ve ever read (I’m currently working through it for the second time).’
--- Sue Palmer, science writer and broadcaster, and author of Toxic Childhood and Twenty-First Century Boys
‘The most comprehensive and coherent account of human brain lateralisation yet published.’
--- Rita Carter, prize-winning science writer and author of The Brain Book, Mapping the Mind, and Exploring Consciousness
'A seminal book.'
--- Professor Ervin László, Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, writing in the Huffington Post
'McGilchrist's demonstration of the damage which has been done, and is increasingly being done, by the dominance of the left hemisphere operating alone, is masterly and totally convincing.'
--- Professor Keith Sagar, Professor of English Studies at Nottingham University, writing in Resurgence
'By far the most interesting and provocative ideas I have encountered recently on the broad subject of neuroscience ... McGilchrist develops a powerful narrative about how each hemisphere of the brain produces a different ‘version’ or ‘take’ on the world. The Master and His Emissary offers some powerful paradigms for how we might better begin to understand aspects of the most basic functions of the human brain.'
--- Jonathan Mills, Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, in the State of the Arts address to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
‘McGilchrist writes well, with a direct engaging style, so that a reader with no background in neuroscience could easily follow his descriptions of brain function…This is a very good book, both informative and erudite.’
--- Ian Gibbins, writing in the Australian Book Review (ABR)
‘Terrifically important’
‘McGilchrist is a remarkable person…he has an unusual insight into art and philosophy and writes lucidly…. Voices such as McGilchrist are essential.’
--- Salley Vickers, ‘Best books under the sun’, writing in the Daily Telegraph
'Absolutely fascinating.'
--- Jessa Crispin, Editor of Bookslut.com
'At last! A book on neuroscience that is a thrilling read, philosophically astute and with wonderful science ...'
--- Mark Vernon, Guardian columnist, Philosophy and Life blog
'Novel, compelling, and profoundly consequential ... obviously the product of many years of research and thought on the part of a thinker of depth and originality as well as deep learning across a number of fields that are very seldom combined ... McGilchrist is an unusually good writer, with as much talent for clear and exciting exposition as anyone I can think of ... unbelievably rich ... the formulations are often beautifully done, managing to state in maximally clear fashion issues of the utmost subtlety. The erudition is staggering. The overall arguments are compelling and well-handled. I think the basic thesis is indeed of absolutely crucial cultural and intellectual importance.'
--- Professor Louis Sass, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers, and author of Madness and Modernism
'Clearly more than any ordinary life-time's work ... capitalising on an extraordinary range of knowledge and experience to unite the humanities and brain sciences in this comprehensive way. I know of no one else who could have done it. Really fascinating stuff ... vast amounts to admire and marvel over. [McGilchrist has] read and thought deeply about an astonishing volume of the literature ... the arguments and deductions seem to me to be immaculate ... the sections on language and music have gripped me particularly.'
--- Professor Alwyn Lishman, Professor Emeritus of Neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, and author of the seminal textbook Organic Psychiatry
'A brilliant, exciting and important book [of] exemplary precision and subtlety ... perhaps the most impressive and important piece of scientific synthesis I have ever read. I kept saying 'thank you, thank you, thank you, for what you are doing and how you are doing it'. The conclusions seem to me extremely robust ... of extraordinary importance for both scientists and humanists. There is no doubt in my mind that the excellence of the book is largely a product of the depth of the writer's expertise in the two fields of science and culture. There is virtually no-one who can match this combination. It is also important that the book is not laboured, but light and user-friendly. Again few writers can match him. But in the end the value of the book is really in the rich and complex exploration of the two hemispheres and their cultural correlates. Most readers will experience the book as a tour de force.'
--- Professor John Onians, Professor Emeritus of World Art at the University of East Anglia, and author of Neuroarthistory
'A wonderful book about brain function and its wider implications … that two different styles of perception and cognition, holistic versus narrowly focused, are both needed for survival, hence evolutionarily ancient, [is] a very nice insight into why brain division was selected for … And it’s refreshing to see sense being talked about the Libet experiments.'
--- Professor Michael McIntyre, FRS, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge