Synopses & Reviews
A provocative and surprising exploration of the longest sustained relationships we have in life—those we have with our siblings.Nobody affects us as deeply as our brothers and sisters. Our siblings are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to, how to conduct friendships and when to walk away. Our siblings are the only people we know who truly qualify as partners for life.
In this perceptive and groundbreaking book, Jeffrey Kluger explores the complex world of siblings in equal parts science, psychology, sociology, and memoir. Based on cutting-edge research, he examines birth order, twins, genetic encoding of behavioral traits, emotional disorders and their effects on sibling relationships, and much more. With his signature insight and humor, Kluger takes science’s provocative new ideas about the subject and transforms them into smart, accessible insights that will help everyone understand the importance of siblings in our lives.
Review
“Honest and vulnerable and caring.”—
The Washington Post“Addictively readable.”—Entertainment Weekly
“The science of siblings is well overdue for this kind of attention.”—The Boston Globe
“A page turner . . . a worthwhile read for anyone interested in human relationships.”—Associated Press
“Endlessly fascinating.”—Parent Magazine
Review
Kluger makes the modern world comprehensible...[his] findings are likely to incite controversy, confirming his contention that explaining simplicity and complexity is never as straightforward as it seems.--Publishers Weekly
Review
Simplexity...is a study of human behavior, and the way we perceive things and events, and how our perception frequently causes us to make wrong assumptions and to perceive simplicity (or complexity) where it does not exist. The book is sure to be a deserved hit among the ever-growing Freakonomics crowd."--Booklist
Review
"A fascinating journey."--Library Journal
Synopsis
"Time" magazine reporter Kluger adeptly translates cutting-edge theory into high-octane history that surrounds the notion of simplexity--that simple things can be more complicated than they seem, and complex things more simple--and how this affects everyone.
Synopsis
Why are the instruction manuals for cell phones incomprehensible?
Why is a truck driver's job as hard as a CEO's?
How can 10 percent of every medical dollar cure 90 percent of the world's disease?
Why do bad teams win so many games? Complexity, as any scientist will tell you, is a slippery idea. Things that seem complicated can be astoundingly simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex. A houseplant may be more intricate than a manufacturing plant. A colony of garden ants may be more complicated than a community of people. A sentence may be richer than a book, a couplet more complicated than a song.
These and other paradoxes are driving a whole new science--simplexity -- that is redefining how we look at the world and using that new view to improve our lives in fields as diverse as economics, biology, cosmology, chemistry, psychology, politics, child development, the arts, and more. Seen through the lens of this surprising new science, the world becomes a delicate place filled with predictable patterns--patterns we often fail to see as we're time and again fooled by our instincts, by our fear, by the size of things, and even by their beauty.
In Simplexity, Time senior writer Jeffrey Kluger shows how a drinking straw can save thousands of lives; how a million cars can be on the streets but just a few hundred of them can lead to gridlock; how investors behave like atoms; how arithmetic governs abstract art and physics drives jazz; why swatting a TV indeed makes it work better. As simplexity moves from the research lab into popular consciousness it will challenge our models for modern living. Jeffrey Kluger adeptly translates newly evolving theory into a delightful theory of everything that will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art -- your world.
Synopsis
Sometimes a complex problem has an easy solution. And sometimes there's more to a simple thing than first appears.
In Simplexity, Time senior writer Jeffrey Kluger shows how a drinking straw can save thousands of lives, how a million cars can be on the streets but just a few hundred of them can lead to gridlock, how investors behave like atoms; how arithmetic governs abstract art and physics drives jazz, and why swatting a TV indeed makes it work better.
Kluger adeptly translates newly evolving science into a delightful theory of everything that will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art--your world.
About the Author
Jeffrey Kluger joined TIME Magazine in 1996, mainly writing science stories, and was named a senior writer in 1998. With astronaut Jim Lovell, he wrote Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, on which the 1995 movie Apollo 13 movie was based. He's written several other books, most recently Splendid Solution, which is about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. Mr. Kluger and two other colleagues won the 2002 Overseas Press Club of America's Whitman Bassow Award for their "Global Warming" cover package (April 9, 2001), garnering first place for the best reporting in any medium on international environmental issues. Before joining TIME, Mr. Kluger was a staff writer for Discover Magazine and a writer and editor for the New York Times Business World Magazine, Family Circle, and Science Digest.