The Wisdom Paradox – How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older
By Elkhonon Goldberg
Published by Pocket Books, 2007

My review for The Nation, published on January 20.

Reissued last year for the baby boomers who meant to read it but it slipped their enfeebled minds, “The Wisdom Paradox” caused a stir in 2005 with its jaunty packaging and its avowal that life begins at 60.

Wisdom comes with experience, so the premise goes, and with all our years of experience we can ensure that we remain useful to the human race by doing a little mental exercise.

The book involves a lot of cerebral heavy lifting, to be sure. There are diagrams on Your Grey Matter and Why It Still Matters, words like “anosognosia” and questions like “What are the effects of ageing on the two halves of the brain?” Not exactly an FAQ.

The effect on both halves of my brain was painful because I dozed off and my head banged on the table in front of me. Goldberg, an American neuropsychologist, is actually a pretty accessible writer, but this volume is recommended only for science geeks and depressed ex-hippies. Everyone else should just read a classic novel, or a biography of someone genuinely clever, to get their creativity synapses well and truly sparked.

TEXT BITE: “Do these rarefied traits, genius and wisdom, stand completely apart from the makeup of us simple mortals? If so, what are we doing here in trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, trying to define genius and wisdom, although we may lack even the ability to recognise the true geniuses and sages among us? And how can we relate these demigod-like gifts, wisdom and genius, to the lives and realities of intelligent, but let’s face it, ordinary human beings, like most readers of this book, as well as its author?”