List of Figures List of Tables Preface Acknowledgements 1. Dr Watson's problem 2. Death and the right hand 3. On the left bank 4. Kleiz, drept, luft, zeso, lijevi, prawy 5. The heart of the dragon 6. The toad, ugly and venomous 7. The dextrous and the gauche 8. The left brain, the right brain and the whole brain 9. Ehud, son of Gera 10. Three men went to mow 11. Keggie-hander 12. Vulgar errors 13. The handedness of Muppets 14. Man is all symmetrie 15. The world, the small, the great Notes Picture and Text Credits Index
Right Hand, Left Hand is the product of sound and creative scholarship, ingeniously weaving historical events and anecdotes into scientific writing for an engaging and informative read. It's a rare and delightful book: a combination of excellent scholarship and clear writing that has as much to offer the general reader as the scholar in the field of behavioral asymmetry and neuroscience. -- Joseph Hellige, author of Hemispheric Asymmetry: What's Right and What's Left
Chris McManus is Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London, and co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health, and Medicine and the journal Laterality.
Right Hand, Left Hand is the product of sound and creative
scholarship, ingeniously weaving historical events and anecdotes
into scientific writing for an engaging and informative read. It's
a rare and delightful book: a combination of excellent scholarship
and clear writing that has as much to offer the general reader as
the scholar in the field of behavioral asymmetry and
neuroscience.
*Joseph Hellige, author of Hemispheric Asymmetry: What's Right
and What's Left*
Chris McManus, a professor of psychology in London, probably knows
more about asymmetry, lateralism, and 'handedness' than anyone else
in the world. He has been researching these subjects for 30 years,
and Right Hand, Left Hand is the result of that career's worth of
work. It is a triumph of a book. Limpidly written, dryly witty and
extraordinarily wide reaching, this is surely the most inclusive
and erudite popular account of asymmetry yet produced. McManus is
as happy talking about Kant's theories of spatial relativism or
Lewis Carroll as he is discussing DNA or the ontogeny of the
flatfish...Among the dozens of questions McManus tackles are why
mirrors reflect left-right but not up-down, why clocks go
clockwise...and why the male testicles are 'unbalanced.' Each
chapter opens with an apparently simple question of this sort, and
then opens out into much broader meditations on the origins and
manifestations of lateralism...McManus's book...has centralized in
an extremely elegant and ordered fashion pretty much everything you
might want to know about asymmetry.
*The Spectator*
The scope and range of scientific disciplines now investigating
laterality is the subject of this wonderful book by Chris McManus.
Although its title implies that the focus is on handedness, don't
be misled...The range of topics that it covers is far-reaching, and
readers from a wide range of disciplines including physics,
biology, chemistry, neuroscience and psychology will all find some
aspects of the book intriguing.
*Nature*
[McManus] has assembled more than a simple pile of trivia. Instead,
he has developed (in his lively, chatter-box, detail-obsessed way)
nothing less than a key to all mythologies...The book itself
marshals lore from every possible discipline, from physics to
philosophy, politics to semantics, with some stops in mathematics
and chemistry...[A] useful corrective to the popular science notion
that symmetry trumps all.
*Boston Globe*
[A] remarkable new book...with graceful and lucid prose, [McManus]
outlines his theory of right-and left-handedness. Along the way
there is also much exotica: Australian drug addicts licking toad
skins, the driving customs of Iceland, the twists of twine in a
prehistoric arrow, Charlie Chaplin's left-handed cello and van
Gogh's reversed lithograph of left-handed potato eaters.
*New York Times*
An engaging, erudite read on handedness, so full of astonishing
facts and anecdotes that readers will want to shake his
hand...Anyone who has ever wondered about handedness will want to
take a look...[McManus] handles the span of his subject with a
dexterous hand.
*Washington Times*
McManus examines the effect that being either right-handed or
left-handed has on our lives, our culture, and our language. He
explores what it is like being left-handed in a right-handed world,
analyzes cerebral specialization and its links to social problems,
and tries to correct some of the erroneous thinking and general
misconceptions that surround left-handedness...McManus skillfully
merges cultural history and scientific discovery to explain the
concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, cerebral specialization,
hemisphere dominance, and right/ left symbolism...McManus presents
an informative, humorous blend of scientific, technical information
with cultural, linguistic information...Highly recommended.
*Choice*
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