6.         Gawande, Atul (2014). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

            New York: Henry Holt and Co. Kindle Edition. ISBN 9780805095159 (hardcover). Ebook ISBN 9781627790550.

[Currently reading, March 2018.]

5.         Brown, Dan (2017). Origin: A Novel

            Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ISBN-13: 9780385514231. Ebook ISBN: 9780385542692.

[Currently reading, February 2018.]

4.         Shubin, Neil (2009). Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

            New York: Vintage. ISBN-13: .

[Currently reading, September 2017.]

3.         Cope, Stephen (2000). Yoga and the Quest for the True Self.

            New York: Bantam. ISBN-10: 055337835X; ISBN-13: 978-0553378351.

Cope is an analyst and a yoga practitioner, one of the residents of Kripalu Yoga Center (Mass.). While this book is meant for a Western audience, I found much that was useful, especially some of his exposition on meditation. Several chapters concern psychoanalytical discursions with an attempt to integrate yoga philosophy with analysis. It is a good effort but falls short because I think analysis tends to be observer driven (i.e., requiring an analyst) whereas meditation is experiential and free of analyses (there is no one there). Of course, Cope knows this well. The integration of approaches is definitely worth exploring because the meditative Indian traditions and India's spiritual philosophies are more closely related to Western psychoanalysis than to any other Western system. I think Roger Walsh (the psychologist at UCLA) has some deeper insights into the parallels between the two. However, Cope is a good writer, and is clearly someone who has experienced great insight and is worthy of respect. He also writes with great humility. Overall, worth reading.

My rating: 3 / 5. First read in November 2006, now reading again in August 2017. 

2.         Gould, Stephen J. (1992). Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History.

New York; W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN-10: 0393308189; ISBN-13: 978-0393308181.

Nothing much to write about. Not a great book. I did find Chapter 3 (Odd organisms and evolutionary exemplars) mildly amusing. Gould is generally very good when he writes about facts and theories. He is however not very interesting when he digresses into philosophy or gives his opinions.

My rating: 1/5. Read in June 2017.

1.         Gould, Stephen J. (1989). Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History.

            New York: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN: 0-393-02705-8.

You don't have to buy Gould's arguments, but you do have to read him. A very nice book on the discovery of Cambrian fossils in the Burgess Shale by Charles Walcott, and the Cambrian radiation. Some of these invertebrates are bizarre (Opabinia and Hallucigenia) and some are fierce (Anomalocaris). Walcott, despite his academic stature, never classified the fossils correctly and shoe-horned them into existing phyla. If you have library access, then go through the scholarly monographs by H. B. Whittington, D. E. G. Briggs, and C. Morris for their re-examination of the fossils and their corrected phyla (most of them are now extinct). A major contribution of the book is the reinterpretation of Walcott's findings by these later researchers. The arguments as to why the Cambrian radiation (or explosion) happened are good in parts, although much of it is accepted dogma. Available on Kindle.

My rating: 3.5 / 5. Read in May 2017.