Knock-Down-Drag-Out Controversy

Even Tom Wolfe is anticipating a “donnybrook” between the God believers and the God deniers around the publication this season of God’s Brain by bestselling anthropologist Lionel Tiger and famed neuropsychiatrist Michael McGuire.

Tiger and McGuire are not bent on proving that God exists. It doesn’t matter. More than 80% of the world’s societies would still adhere to some form of religion—and that includes non-human primates. A god or some equivalent is a product of the normal human brain. “It is almost a neurological secretion,” they say.

Their compassionate and lively book radically changes the discussion and may discomfit many.

Lionel Tiger is interviewed on CBC's The Hour:

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Hour/ID=1436317852

Listen to Lionel Tiger on CBC's The Current by clicking here:

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/current_20100309_28839.mp3

A Snowboarder Attempts World Domination 

Those captivated by the feats of Olympic snowboarders will be intrigued by Godblog, a novel by Laurie Channer. Her anti-hero Dag, a snowboarder, loses his mojo only to jumpstart his own swift, spiraling descent into megalomania.

Or maybe it was jumpstarted by his fall-back job as a coffee barista in Whistler. After reading the novel, you won’t look at snowboarders the same way again.

The Mad, Mad World of Ad Men

Age of Persuasion by Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant has had four printings in Canada since its publication by Knopf Canada Nov 2009. Now it is released in the US by Counterpoint with a dynamite cover that telegraphs Mad Men.

A review in Publisher’s Weekly calls Age of Persuasion “witty and insightful,” “appealing and informative” and “indispensable to marketers or anyone curious about the power and ubiquity of advertising in modern culture.”