Recommended Reading

Metacognition

• In "Outsmarting IQ - The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence", David Perkins presents and examines three facets of intelligence: neural (IQ), experiential (acquired, as exhibited by artists, craftsmen, or master chessplayers), and reflective. It's this last component which gives us the ability to increase our intelligence beyond its apparent limitations. Published by Free Press.

• Typically, it's not the smartest people that run the company or the country. Paul G. Stoltz, PhD, presents a new yardstick that's better than IQ in "Adversity Quotient - Turning Obstacles into Opportunities" for determining one's success in life. Determine your Adversity Response Profile, and learn ways in which you and your group can improve your ability to succeed in what you do. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

• Edward de Bono has authored quite a few books on creative thinking. His "Six Thinking Hats" (published by Little, Brown) is an easy read. While "Serious Creativity" (HarperBusiness) is a bit harder to plow through, it collects 25 years of de Bono's experience in using lateral thinking to improve one's creative thinking ability.

Sleep

• Stanley Coren's "Sleep Thieves" has proof why the shift to daylight savings time is dangerous. The very readable book shows why the sacrifice of sleep not only does not save time, but actually costs time and much more. Includes a sleep debt quiz. Published by Free Press.

• "The Promise of Sleep" is another tome examining the impact of sleep on our lives. "Healthy sleep has been empirically proven to be the single most important determinant in predicting longevity, more influential than diet, exercise or heredity, but our modern culture has become an alarming study in sleep deprivation and ignorance." -- From the advertising blurb for this book by William C. Dement (MD, PhD) and Christopher Vaughan. Published by Dell.

Education

• "How Children Fail" by John Holt, a book first published in 1964, wonderfully explores some of the flaws in our system of education. This book and the companion volume "How Children Learn" (1967) should be required reading for every teacher. In reprint by Perseus Press.

Challenging Prevailing Thought

• Occam's Razor is the principle of applying the simplest theory that fits the facts. Eric J. Lerner presents the plasma cosmology theory of Hannes Alfven and supports it with new discoveries in science in "The Big Bang Never Happened". It has interesting and plausible explanations of quasars and the evolution of galaxies. This book makes the inflationary Big Bang theory sound like Ptolemy's epicycles. To get you in the mind to consider Alfven's theory, Lerner takes you through the development of the mechanisms behind scientific thinking, and how such thinking is influenced by the prevailing world-view. Published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.