Awards

• Winner of Aventis Prize for Science Books 2003
• Winner of Aventis Prize for Science Books 2003.
• Winner of Aventis Prizes for Science Books: General Prize 2003
• Winner of Aventis Prizes for Science Books: General Prize 2003.

Overview

Chris McManus's dazzlingly written debut takes familiar, almost childish, questions and for the first time for a popular audience answers them: - Why are most people right-handed? Do left-handers behave differently to right-handers? - Why is the heart on the left-hand side of the body? - Why is each side of the human brain so different? - Why do the British drive on the left? Why do European languages go from left to right, while Arabic ones read the other way? - Why do clocks go clockwise? - What is the relationship between handedness and speech disorders, such as stuttering? Right Hand, Left Hand uses sources as diverse as the paintings of Rembrandt and the sculpture of Michelangelo, the behaviour of Canadian cichlid fish and the story of early cartography. Modern cognitive science, the history of the Wimbledon tennis championship and the biographies of great musicians are also used to explain the vast repertoire of 'left-right' symbolism that permeates our everyday lives.

Full Product Details

9780753813553

Table of Contents

Reviews

Wonderful book...He has done a marvellous job of summarising and integrating a wide range of findings from various disciplines addressing questions on the nature of right and left * NATURE * Spanning disciplines from genetics to folklore, McManus's account of 'handedness' must be one of the most intellectually capricious science books this year * SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY * A fascinating study of the origins of asymmetry in life, culture and myth * TLS * Limpidly written, dryly witty and extraordinarily wide-reaching, this is surely the most inclusive and erudite popular account of asymmetry yet produced * SPECTATOR * A scientific detective story, a brilliant cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Gray's anatomy * NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR * A fascinating and immensely readable exploration of the whole topic * NEW SCIENTIST *

This book is that rare thing: a work of popular science that is both broad and deep, bringing a weight of multidisciplinary approaches from genetics, physics, psychology and sociology to bear upon the subject of handedness - why most people are right-handed, and why in most cultures the left side is regarded with dislike, fear and disapproval. The answers to these questions - and other similar ones, such as why the heart is on the left, and why human beings are asymmetric - are not easy. The story told by McManus is a complex one, but he tells it clearly, elegantly and with obvious relish. McManus loves debunking myths - it's not true, for example, that Einstein and Picasso were left-handed - and enjoys demonstrating how complex the reality is. The answer to the question of humans' left-handedness lies, believe it or not, deep in pre-history when meteorites may have brought L-amino acids to earth. Intrigued? Then read the book. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Chris McManus is Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College, London. He is the author of the leading textbook Psychology in Medicine and is the co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine. He is one of the world's foremost experts on handedness and lateralization.

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