David Jonas

I'm sympathetic to the thesis underlying this work, but the book made a miserable case for it. Some of their arguments are just bizarre (i.e. that interest in something like sports statistics is a childlike reversion to our interest in getting good grades in school [as if it was children who invented schools and grading systems], or that as we become more childlike we become more violent [Lord of the Flies besides, I hardly tend to associate violence with children]).

The book is built on broad generalizations, rigid, ethnocentric ideas of human development and childhood, and a curious but undeveloped argument that humans have ruined themselves by emphasizing their intellectual "mammalian brain" at the expense of their instinctual "lizard brain".… (més)

Intriguing hypotheses. For example, that Primitive people are led by the wise; modern civilization is led by the sick.

The authors find a thread running through all civilizations. So much of what man does, the way he behaves, the things he likes can be explained as a result of what is "structurally embedded in his anatomical configuration". The analysis of the morphology is convincing.

By understanding the "thread of infantilization" they seek and lead us to a greater understanding of our "inordinately powerful, creative, gifted--and unruly-- species."… (més)