Review by Booklist Review
Klein continues a string of books in his specialty, educational comics, with another primer, collaborating this time with psychologist Oppenheimer. The latter's specialty in marketing shows in the examples drawn from spending behavior, and that aligns the book with Klein's The Cartoon Introduction to Economics (2010). Emphasizing that the object of psychology is to explain how organisms especially human beings understand what they experience, Klein and Oppenheimer present psychological knowledge in three parts concerned with making sense of, respectively, the world, ourselves, and each other. The first covers perception, learning, memory, and thinking; the second, metacognition, emotion, motivation, and stress; the third, language, personality, social influence, and stereotyping. While the main text economically presents theories and concepts, remarks in the cartoons simultaneously exemplify and comment via joking rejoinders. Klein's stretched-out, rubbery figures, including since the subject is psychology, after all rats and dogs, genuinely keep the instruction jolly, and his borderless panels greatly help in keeping it moving. Beginning students of psychology and nonstudents looking for a painless refresher probably won't find a better book for their purposes.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This peppy overview of psychological science follows the now-familiar educational comics format of snappy explanatory text interspersed with cartoon commentary. A colorful cast of unnamed characters-two lab-coated scientists, a bickering couple, some cavepeople, a gorilla-acts out the concepts in the text, adding gags, observations, and explanations. Sometimes the visuals clarify the material: linked memories, for example, are easy to understand as a chain of beads hooked together by busy cartoon workers. Other times, the illustrations simply provide humorous commentary. Oppenheimer, a Carnegie Mellon professor, wisely sticks to examples from contemporary research rather than getting too mired in history or minutiae, though his material sometimes tends a little too much toward pop-psych fluff. Still, he and artist Klein, a veteran of cartoon science guides as well as the creator of the beautiful Lost Colony graphic novels, cover an impressive swath of territory, including the mechanics of thought, the development of language, and the way society forces all our uniquely complicated minds to work together. The book confidently fulfills the purpose stated in its title. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Behold the marvelous mind, which helps us make sense of the world, ourselves, and others. Yet, interestingly, we can only hold about seven units of information in our working memory at one time, which leads to all sorts of mental shortcuts for understanding complicated perceptions quickly. Thus, while explaining how the mind works, Oppenheimer (marketing & psychology, Univ. of California Los Angeles) also describes how our minds do not work very well sometimes. Stress, mental habits, slapdash reasoning, emotions, language, and circumstances all jostle to throw our memories and judgments out of whack, although there are ways to compensate. Klein (The Lost Colony) illustrates these complexities with charming, funny drawings of psychologists in white coats doing experiments, frantic "brain workers" with lights on their headgear, and a variety of hapless everyday people caught in cognitive challenges. Unfortunately, the greyscale art in the review copy appears muddy. Darker colored edges would have made Klein's visuals easier to grasp. Verdict As the field of psychology has become more humane, the possibility of progress through understanding our thinking might inspire readers to delve more deeply into areas of interest and even galvanize students to major in the subject.-Martha Cornog, Philadelphia © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
