reviews

From the Minds of Babes... Author:  Paul Bloom Where does our sense of right and wrong come from?  Is it gradually transmitted to us by our parents, or are we born with the rudiments of morality wired into our nervous systems?  Author Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, makes a compelling and eye-opening argument for the latter in Just Babies, describing how even babies who are too young to speak or crawl already have ethical opinions. Basing his argument on dozens of cleverly designed studies, Bloom reveals how babies recognize the difference between good and bad behavior, favoring [...]

High Flying History... Author:  Richard Holmes I still remember being thrilled by Le Ballon Rouge as a kid.  The short 1956 Oscar winning movie about a small boy and his friendship with a magical red balloon in the tough streets of Paris had a lasting impact on me as I dealt with my own bullies as a kid.  It is with a similar naïve enthusiasm that British biographer Richard Holmes approaches the romantic and occasionally tragic history of ballooning in Falling Upwards, an exploration of humankind’s first successful flights from the Earth’s surface. Starting with the early days in Britain [...]