Audio only
Length10h 52m
About this audiobook
In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ.
The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century.
But the 1950s also marked the beginning of the Cold War and a period of transformative social change across Western society. These developments resulted in unease and paranoia. Mysterious new afflictions—none more mystifying than “brainwashing”—also appeared at this time. Faced with the discovery that, as one leading psychiatrist put it, “the human personality is not as stable as we often assume,” many researchers in the sciences of brain and behavior joined the effort to understand these conditions. They devised ingenious and sometimes transgressive experimental methods for studying and proposing countermeasures to the problem of Communist mind control. Some of these procedures took on a strange life of their own, escaping the confines of the research lab to become part of 1960s counterculture. Much later, in the early 2000s, they resurfaced in the War on Terror.
These stories, often told separately, are brought together by the historian Andreas Killen in this chronicle of the brain’s mid-twentieth-century emergence as both a new research frontier and an organ whose integrity and capacities—especially that of memory—were imagined as uniquely imperiled in the 1950s. Nervous Systems explores the anxious context in which the mid-century sciences of the brain took shape and reveals the deeply ambivalent history that lies behind our contemporary understanding of this organ.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.5 (30)
Includes Goodreads
GenreHistory, Science and Nature
Length10 hrs 52 mins
Narrated byGraham Halstead
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateMar 21, 2023
LanguageEnglish
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
Ghosts of HiroshimaCharles Pellegrino8h 59m4.5 (877)$23
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00
Kings and PawnsHoward Bryant10h 9m4.6 (678)$29 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Jubal Stone: U.S. Marshal: Blood Trail To Hell: A Western Adventure NovelCasey Nash3h 42m4.6 (3.2K)$18 · $0.00
Fall and RiseMitchell Zuckoff17h 23m4.6 (9.8K)$40 · $0.00
The SurvivorJosef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin9h 22m4.6 (2.5K)$29 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 (Annotated)Alexis de Tocqueville17h 25m4.6 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
All the Gallant MenDonald Stratton, Ken Gire5h 55m4.6 (11.8K)$24 · $0.00
Saint Joan (Annotated)George Bernard Shaw6h 20m4.6 (1.2K)$1.20 · $0.00
Medgar and MyrlieJoy-Ann Reid10h 52m4.5 (27.8K)$29 · $0.00
The History of the Peloponnesian War (Annotated)Thucydides24h 3m4.6 (1.1K)$2 · $0.00
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
The Story of BirdsSteve Brusatte11h 49m4.6 (401)$29 · $0.00
How Stella Learned to TalkChristina Hunger7h4.5 (10.9K)$24 · $0.00
Craig & FredCraig Grossi8h 6m4.5 (9.6K)$26 · $0.00
Celebrating BirdsNatalia Rojas, Ana Maria Martinez6h 47m4.6 (330)$24 · $0.00
Saving JemimaJulie Zickefoose4h 59m4.5 (749)$20 · $0.00
Will's Red CoatTom Ryan8h 23m4.5 (2.3K)$26 · $0.00
Of Time and TurtlesSy Montgomery10h 34m4.5 (5K)$29 · $0.00
Zen and the Art of Saving the PlanetThich Nhat Hanh9h 20m4.5 (3.9K)$29 · $0.00
Bottle of LiesKatherine Eban14h 25m4.4 (12K)$33 · $0.00
IngrainedCallum Robinson8h 10m4.5 (1.1K)$26 · $0.00
The Lion Tracker's Guide To LifeBoyd Varty3h 1m4.4 (4.8K)$18 · $0.00
Born for LoveBruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz11h 42m4.4 (4K)$29 · $0.00
The Mountains of California (With Original Drawings & Photographs) (Annotated)John Muir11h 35m4.5 (1.1K)$2 · $0.00
The New GuysMeredith Bagby16h 50m4.4 (1.2K)$40 · $0.00
Blue PasturesMary Oliver3h 23m4.4 (3.8K)$18 · $0.00
The Rise and Reign of the MammalsSteve Brusatte13h 26m4.4 (11.1K)$33 · $0.00
VaccinatedPaul A. Offit8h 30m4.4 (3.7K)$26 · $0.00
The Light EatersZoë Schlanger10h 57m4.4 (22.8K)$29 · $0.00
Where the Lost Dogs GoSusannah Charleson11h 7m4.5 (699)$23 · $0.00
You may also like
PUBLIC OPINION (Annotated)Walter Lippmann13h 20m4.1 (12.5K)$1 · $0.00
The Book of Laughter and ForgettingMilan Kundera8h 20m4.0 (67.3K)$26 · $0.00
StasilandAnna Funder10h 40m4.2 (23.5K)$20
TrippedNorman Ohler6h 13m4.2 (2.2K)$24 · $0.00
The BohemiansNorman Ohler11h 50m4.2 (1.4K)$29 · $0.00
SpeechlessMichael Knowles8h 24m4.4 (6.3K)$20
Messing with the EnemyClint Watts9h 34m4.0 (1.2K)$29 · $0.00
Putin’s PlaybookRebekah Koffler13h 10m3.9 (2.4K)$23
Nineteen eighty-four (Annotated)George Orwell12h 42m4.3 (5.9M)$2 · $0.00
White GuiltShelby Steele5h 28m4.3 (3.6K)$24 · $0.00
Cold WarriorsDuncan White24h 46m4.3 (441)$53 · $0.00
Project Artichoke - The CIA's First Experiments in Controlling the Human MindNathaniel B. Carver1h 21m$5.70 · $0.00
The Story of PutinUnited States Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, Christopher T. Gans5h 5m$1 · $0.00
THE WEIGHT OF ANOTHER'S SKINAeryn Voss12h 50m5.0 (3) Only with Ultra
PUTIN: The History of the Reign & The Shape-Shifting StrategyUnited States Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, Christopher T. Gans4h 57m$2 · $0.00
The Story of PutinUnited States Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, Christopher T. Gans5h 5m$2 · $0.00
Vladimir Putin: Authoritarianism and Anti-AmericanismUnited States Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, Christopher T. Gans5h$1 · $0.00
Vanity Fair: March 2015 IssueVanity Fair5h 31m$17
Red ListDavid Caute14h 30m3.3 (18)$23
Thirty Years of Treason, Vol. 1Eric Bentley13h 17m4.4 (49)$23