the secret body book review

• Science & Math
• Biological Sciences

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $13.10 $13.10 FREE delivery: Saturday, April 27 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $12.00

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live Hardcover – August 24, 2021

Purchase options and add-ons.

“A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling.”―Bill Bryson A revolutionary new vision of human biology and the scientific breakthroughs that will transform our lives Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cells. Imagine being able to monitor your body's well-being, or have a diet tailored to your microbiome. The Secret Body reveals how these and other stunning breakthroughs and technologies are transforming our understanding of how the human body works, what it is capable of, how to protect it from disease, and how we might manipulate it in the future. Taking readers to the cutting edge of research, Daniel Davis shows how radical new possibilities are becoming realities thanks to the visionary efforts of scientists who are revealing the invisible and secret universe within each of us. Focusing on six important frontiers, Davis describes what we are learning about cells, the development of the fetus, the body's immune system, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome―areas of human biology that are usually understood in isolation. Bringing them together here for the first time, Davis offers a new vision of the human body as a biological wonder of dizzying complexity and possibility. Written by an award-winning scientist at the forefront of this adventure, The Secret Body is a gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of the dawning revolution in human health.

• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Princeton University Press
• Publication date August 24, 2021
• Dimensions 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• ISBN-10 0691210586
• ISBN-13 978-0691210582
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press (August 24, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691210586
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691210582
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• #126 in Immunology (Books)
• #337 in Physiology (Books)
• #1,734 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

About the author

Daniel m. davis.

Daniel M. Davis is Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester and author of three books. The Beautiful Cure was shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society Science Book Prize and was a book of the year in The Times, Telegraph and New Scientist. The Compatibility Gene was longlisted for the 2014 Royal Society Science Book Prize and shortlisted for the Society of Biology Book Prize. His most recent book, The Secret Body, published in 2021, has been praised by Bill Bryson, Alice Roberts and Brian Cox, among others. He has also written for The Times, Guardian, New Scientist and Scientific American. He regularly speaks at literary and science festivals, and has appeared on several radio and TV programs. His research, using super-resolution microscopy to study the immune system, was listed in Discover magazine as one of the top 100 breakthroughs of the year. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and has published over 140 academic papers.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE SECRET BODY

How the new science of the human body is changing the way we live.

by Daniel M. Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 17, 2021

Dazzling discoveries in expert hands.

An exciting update on human biology in the years since the initial description of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953.

This is not a subject that popular writers have ignored, but Davis, a professor of immunology, refreshingly avoids the low-hanging fruit (life extension, designer babies) and digs into the actual science. While acknowledging the many miracles this new science will lead to (most of which will not occur in the immediate future), the author explores what contemporary scientists have learned and how they learned it. Davis emphasizes that many breakthroughs followed the development of new technology. For centuries, scientists could only examine living cells through the familiar light microscope, the magnification of which reached a limit in the 1870s before breakthroughs in the 20th century vastly increased its power. Years of work determined the structure of a single protein, insulin, and won Frederick Sanger a Nobel Prize in 1958. Today, machines do this in minutes. “It once took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to sequence a human genome,” writes Davis. “Now it takes a few hundred dollars, or less, and can be done in a single day.” The tedious process of counting and identifying living cells became much smoother with the invention of the flow cytometer. It’s easy to understand how the heart or kidney works by watching it in action but not the brain. Enter optogenetics, by which a genetically altered neuron fires when exposed to light. Following its tortuous path became easier with another advance that allowed scientists to give a cell a bright color without killing it. Davis, who writes accessibly and concisely, also examines a fairly new fascination, the gut: “There’s scarcely any state of human health or disease that hasn’t been linked with the [microbiome]. Variations have been associated with diseases as diverse as autism, asthma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.” Further current research is revealing new ways that we can manipulate our resident bacteria for our benefit.

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-691-21058-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

HEALTH & FITNESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Share your opinion of this book

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2023

New York Times Bestseller

by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | POLITICS

More by Walter Isaacson

BOOK REVIEW

by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand

by Walter Isaacson

More About This Book

BOOK TO SCREEN

F*CK IT, I'LL START TOMORROW

by Action Bronson ; photographed by Bonnie Stephens ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021

The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.

The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.

“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”

Pub Date: April 20, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5

Page Count: 184

Publisher: Abrams

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HEALTH & FITNESS

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

The Secret Body

• Daniel M. Davis

30% off with code PUP30

• Not for sale in the Commonwealth and the European Union

Before you purchase audiobooks and ebooks

Please note that audiobooks and ebooks purchased from this site must be accessed on the Princeton University Press app. After you make your purchase, you will receive an email with instructions on how to download the app. Learn more about audio and ebooks .

Support your local independent bookstore.

• United States
• United Kingdom

The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live

“A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling.”—Bill Bryson This audiobook narrated by Jot Davies offers revolutionary new vision of human biology and the scientific breakthroughs that will transform our lives

• Audio Preview
• Download Cover

Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer, or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cells. Imagine being able to monitor your body’s well-being, or have a diet tailored to your microbiome. The Secret Body reveals how these and other stunning breakthroughs and technologies are transforming our understanding of how the human body works, what it is capable of, how to protect it from disease, and how we might manipulate it in the future. Taking readers to the cutting edge of research, Daniel Davis shows how radical new possibilities are becoming realities thanks to the visionary efforts of scientists to reveal the invisible and secret universe within each of us. Focusing on six important frontiers, Davis describes what we are learning about cells, the development of the fetus, the body’s immune system, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome—areas of human biology that are usually understood in isolation. Bringing them together here for the first time, Davis offers a new vision of the human body as a biological wonder of dizzying complexity and possibility. Written by an award-winning scientist at the forefront of this adventure, The Secret Body is a gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of the dawning revolution in human health.

Listen in: The Secret Body

Awards and recognition.

• Finalist for the PROSE Award in Neuroscience, Association of American Publishers
• A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

Daniel M. Davis is professor of immunology at the University of Manchester. He is the author of The Beautiful Cure and The Compatibility Gene . He lives in Cheshire, England. Twitter @dandavis101

“A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling. Daniel Davis has a rare knack for making complex science comprehensible and thrilling.” —Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“Daniel Davis writes with passion and clarity, presenting the cutting edge of technology that is revolutionizing our understanding of how the human body works. His narrative style whips you along from innovation to innovation while maintaining scientific accuracy throughout—a first-class read.” —Jack Gilbert, coauthor of Dirt Is Good

Stay connected for new books and special offers. Subscribe to receive a welcome discount for your next order. 

• ebook & Audiobook Cart

Daniel M Davis

The secret body.

Select a format:

A brilliant deep-dive into the latest discoveries of human health. An inspiration!

About the  author

More from this author.

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

By signing up, I confirm that I'm over 16. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our Privacy Policy

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

Call us (08:30-17:00 UK)

International, wildlife survey & monitoring, practical conservation equipment, academic & professional books, field guides & natural history.

• Bat Survey & Monitoring
• Passive Full Spectrum Bat Detectors
• Beginners Bat Detectors
• %20Bat%20Traps%20%26%20Nets">Bat Traps & Nets
• Mammal Survey & Monitoring
• %20Large%20Mammal%20Nets%20and%20Traps">Large Mammal Traps & Nets
• %20Small%20Mammal%20Traps">Small Mammal Traps
• %20Telemetry">Telemetry
• Wildlife Photography
• %20Trail%20Cameras">Trail Cameras
• %20Wildlife%20CCTV%20Cameras">Wildlife CCTV Cameras
• %20TriggerSmart%20Camera%20Triggers">DSLR Camera Triggers
• Microscopes & Hand Lenses
• %20Hand%20Lenses">Hand Lenses
• %20Digital%20Microscopes">Digital Microscopes
• %20Stereo%20Microscopes">Stereo Microscopes
• Aquatic Survey & Monitoring
• %20Professional%20Hand%20%26%20Kick%20Nets">Professional Hand & Kick Nets
• %20Water%20Testing">Water Testing
• %20Waders%20%26%20Aquatic%20Safety">Waders & Aquatic Safety
• Plant Survey
• %20Tree%20Survey%20Equipment">Tree Survey Equipment
• %20Quadrats%20%26%20Point%20Frames">Quadrats & Point Frames
• %20Botanical%20Presses%20%26%20Accessories">Botanical Presses & Accessories
• %20Binoculars">Binoculars
• %20Endoscopes%20%26%20Accessories">Endoscopes & Accessories
• %20Thermal%20Imaging">Thermal Imaging Scopes
• Amphibian & Reptile Survey
• %20Amphibian%20Survey%20%26%20Monitoring">Amphibian Survey & Monitoring
• %20Reptile%20Survey%20%26%20Monitoring">Reptile Survey & Monitoring
• %20Scales%2C%20Balances%20%26%20Holding%20Bags">Scales, Balances & Holding Bags
• %20Insect%20Nets%20%26%20Beating%20Trays">Insect Nets & Beating Trays
• %20Moth%20Traps">Moth Traps
• %20Insect%20Rearing%20>%20Insect%20Cages">Insect Rearing Cages
• Ornithology & Bird Ringing
• %20Sound%20Recording">Sound Recording
• %20Mist%20Nets">Mist Nets
• %20Bird%20Survey%20Equipment">Bird Survey Equipment
• Environmental Survey & Monitoring
• %20Dataloggers">Dataloggers
• %20Thermometers">Thermometers
• %20Soil%20Survey">Soil Survey
• Field Study Equipment
• %20Lamps%20%26%20Torches">Lamps & Torches
• %20GPS%20%26%20Landscape%20Survey">GPS & Landscape Survey
• %20Field%20Stationery">Field Stationery
• %20Woodcrete%20%26%20WoodStone%20Bird%20Boxes">Woodcrete & WoodStone Bird Boxes
• %20Bird%20Boxes%20for%20Walls%20%26%20Fences">Bird Boxes for Walls & Fences
• %20Integrated%20Bird%20Boxes">Integrated Bird Boxes
• %20Pond%20Dipping%20%26%20Rock%20Pooling">Pond Dipping & Rock Pooling
• %20Classroom%20%26%20Laboratory">Classroom & Laboratory
• %20Field%20Studies%20Essentials">Field Studies Essentials
• Habitat Management Tools
• %20Saws">Saws
• %20Measuring%20Equipment">Measuring Equipment
• %20Marking%20Tape%20%26%20Marking%20Flags">Marking Tape & Marking Flags
• %20Woodcrete%20%26%20WoodStone%20Bat%20Boxes">Woodcrete & WoodStone Bat Boxes
• %20Bat%20Boxes%20for%20External%20Walls">Bat Boxes for External Walls
• %20Integrated%20Bat%20Boxes">Integrated Bat Boxes
• Other Nest Boxes, Habitats & Feeders
• %20Insect%20Boxes">Insect Boxes
• %20Mammal%20Boxes">Mammal Boxes
• %20Frog%20%26%20Toad%20Habitats">Frog & Toad Habitats
• Wildlife Management
• %20Badger%20Gates%20%26%20Fencing">Badger Gates & Fencing
• %20Invasive%20Species%20Control">Invasive Species Control
• %20Amphibian%20%26%20Reptile%20Fencing">Amphibian & Reptile Fencing
• %20Non-Passerines">Non-passerines
• %20Passerines">Passerines
• %20World%20Lists%20%26%20Handbooks">World Lists & Handbooks
• Insects & other Invertebrates
• %20Insects">Insects
• %20Arthropods%20%28excl.%20insects%29%20>%20Spiders%2C%20Scorpions%2C%20Ticks%20%26%20Mites%20%28Arachnids%29">Spiders
• %20Other%20Invertebrates">Other Invertebrates
• Marine & Freshwater
• %20Fishes">Fish Identification Guides
• %20Marine%20Identification%20Guides">Marine Identification Guides
• %20Freshwater%20Identification%20Guides">Freshwater Identification Guides
• Habitats & Ecosystems
• %20Forests%20%26%20Wetlands">Forests & Wetlands
• %20Coasts%20%26%20Islands">Coasts & Islands
• %20Urban%20%26%20Built%20Environment">Urban & Built Environment
• Natural History
• %20Biography%2C%20Exploration%20%26%20Travel">Biography, Exploration & Travel
• %20General%20Natural%20History">General Natural History
• %20History%20of%20Science%20%26%20Nature">History of Science
• %20Bats%20%28Chiroptera%29">Bats
• %20Marine%20Mammals">Marine Mammals
• %20Primates">Primates
• Reptiles & Amphibians
• %20Reptiles">Reptile Field Guides
• %20Amphibians">Amphibian Field Guides
• %20Reptiles%20%26%20Amphibians%3A%20General">Herpetology Handbooks
• %20Vascular%20Plants%20>%20Orchids">Orchids
• %20Vascular%20Plants%20>%20Trees%20%26%20Shrubs">Trees & Shrubs
• %20Vascular%20Plants%20>%20Grasses%2C%20Sedges%2C%20Rushes%20%26%20Ferns">Grasses, Sedges, Rushes, & Ferns
• %20Parks%20%26%20Protected%20Areas">Parks & Protected Areas
• %20Parks%20%26%20Protected%20Areas">Americas
• %20Parks%20%26%20Protected%20Areas">Europe & the Mediterranean
• %20Parks%20%26%20Protected%20Areas">Asia
• %20Parks%20%26%20Protected%20Areas">View All
• %20Mammal%20Monographs">Monographs
• %20Mammal%20Atlases%20%26%20Faunas">Atlases & Faunas
• %20Mammal%20Biology%20%26%20Ecology">Biology & Ecology
• %20Reptile%20%26%20Amphibian%20Monographs">Monographs
• %20Reptile%20%26%20Amphibian%20Atlases%20%26%20Faunas">Atlases & Faunas
• %20Reptile%20%26%20Amphibian%20Biology%20%26%20Ecology">Biology & Ecology
• Evolutionary Biology
• %20Evolution">Evolution
• %20Human%20Evolution%20%26%20Anthropology">Human Evolution & Anthropology
• %20Cladistics%2C%20Phylogeny%2C%20Phenology%20%26%20Taxonomy">Cladistics, Phylogeny & Taxonomy
• Conservation & Biodiversity
• %20Conservation%20Biology">Conservation Biology
• %20Species%20Conservation%20%26%20Care">Species Conservation & Care
• %20Habitat%20Management%20%26%20Care">Habitat Management & Care
• Environmental & Social Studies
• %20Economics%2C%20Politics%20%26%20Policy">Economics, Politics & Policy
• %20Natural%20Resource%20Use%20%26%20Depletion">Natural Resource Use & Depletion
• %20Climate%20Change">Climate Change
• Ornithology
• %20Biology%2C%20Ecology%20%26%20Behaviour">Biology, Ecology & Behaviour
• %20Conservation%2C%20Care%20%26%20Monitoring">Conservation, Care & Monitoring
• %20Taxonomy%20%26%20Nomenclature">Taxonomy & Nomenclature
• Marine & Freshwater Biology
• %20Fishes">Fishes
• %20Marine%20Biology">Marine Biology
• %20Freshwater%20Biology">Freshwater Biology
• %20Behavioural%20Ecology">Behavioural Ecology
• %20Population%20%26%20Community%20Ecology">Population & Community Ecology
• %20Ecosystem%20%26%20Landscape%20Ecology">Ecosystem & Landscape Ecology
• Earth System Sciences
• %20Lithosphere">Lithosphere
• %20Hydrosphere">Hydrosphere
• %20Atmosphere">Atmosphere
• History & other Humanities
• %20History%20of%20Science%20%26%20Nature">History of Science & Nature
• %20Environmental%20History">Environmental History
• %20Philosophy%2C%20Ethics%20%26%20Religion">Philosophy, Ethics & Religion
• %20Invertebrate%20Monographs">Monographs
• %20Invertebrate%20Atlases%20%26%20Faunas">Atlases & Faunas
• %20Invertebrate%20Biology%20%26%20Ecology">Biology & Ecology
• %20Floras%20%26%20Botanical%20Field%20Guides">Floras & Botanical Field Guides
• %20Mycology">Mycology
• %20Economic%20Botany%20%26%20Ethnobotany">Economic Botany & Ethnobotany
• Organismal to Molecular Biology
• %20Ethology">Ethology
• %20Genetics">Genetics
• %20Microbiology">Microbiology
• Palaeontology
• %20Palaeozoology%20%26%20Extinctions">Palaeozoology & Extinctions
• %20Palaeobotany">Palaeobotany
• %20Palaeoclimatology">Palaeoclimatology
• %20Data%20Analysis%20%26%20Modelling">Data Analysis & Modelling
• %20Editing%20%26%20Writing">Editing & Writing
• %20Collections%20Management">Collections Management
• Good Reads on Evolution
• Richard Dawkins
• Edward O. Wilson
• Matt Ridley
• Nature Writing
• Peter Marren
• Marianne Taylor
• Richard Mabey
• Environmental History
• Brian Fagan
• Jared Diamond
• Oliver Rackham
• Nature Writing Classics
• Gilbert White
• Aldo Leopold
• Palaeontology Good Reads
• Donald R. Prothero
• Michael J. Benton
• Richard Fortey
• Conservation Good Reads
• Michael McCarthy
• Rachel Carson
• Dave Goulson
• Popular Science
• Tim Birkhead
• Sean B. Carroll
• Yuval Noah Harari
• Environmental Issues
• James Lovelock
• Dieter Helm
• Biography, Exploration & Travel
• Alfred Russel Wallace
• Sir David Attenborough

British Wildlife

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Conservation Land Management

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

The Secret Body How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live

About this book

Recent and dramatic breakthroughs in our understanding of the body will profoundly change the experience of being human in the coming century. Already they are opening up boundary-breaking possibilities for intervention at every level, from our brains and genes to our microbiomes and immune systems. These will confer unprecedented powers over health, childhood development, our cognitive and physical abilities, and affect every aspect of how we live our lives and think about ourselves. As the secrets of our bodies are revealed, we all will face previously unthinkable choices with consequences we have yet to understand. Imagine knowing years in advance the precise likelihood of developing specific cancers, thanks to a bespoke understanding of every cell in your body; following a diet and health regime tailored to your microbiome; continuous monitoring of your body's workings and well-being; taking drugs that improve your cognition and help to acquire new skills; manipulating the genes of your unborn children to eliminate disease or even enhance their capabilities. Written by an award-winning scientist at the forefront of this work, The Secret Body shows how these radical and disconcerting possibilities have been made real thanks to the ingenious technologies and decades-long collaborations of scientists worldwide. A gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of this dawning revolution, it presents a vision of the human body of dizzying complexity, wonder and possibility.

Customer Reviews

Daniel M. Davis is Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester and author of two previous books: The Beautiful Cure , shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society Science Book Prize and a book of the year in The Times , Telegraph and New Scientist , and The Compatibility Gene , longlisted for the 2014 Royal Society Science Book Prize and shortlisted for the Society of Biology Book Prize. His research, using super-resolution microscopy to study the immune system, was listed in Discover magazine as one of the top 100 breakthroughs of the year. He is also the author of over 140 academic papers, collectively cited over 13,000 times, including articles in Nature, Science and Scientific American .

"A big-picture forecast of how medicine stands on the threshold of a revolution that will radically change all of our lives [...] Davis is a polar opposite of the typecast propeller-hatted futurologist. He is beguilingly informal and affably humorous" – The Times "A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling. Daniel Davis has a rare knack for making complex science comprehensible and thrilling" – Bill Bryson "An extraordinary journey that reveals the magnificence, intricacy and beauty of the human body, fundamentally changing the way we see ourselves. Masterful" – Alice Roberts "A beautifully rendered picture of the startling new discoveries in human biology which are radically altering our understanding of how we function and what our future holds" – Brian Cox "What we now know about the human body would seem magical to people just a hundred years ago. Davis takes us on a grand voyage to see how we reached our current state of understanding, along the way interweaving the accounts of amazing discoveries with the very human stories of the many scientists who made them possible. It often reads like a detective story and anyone interested in biology will learn much from this enjoyable book" – Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry and author of Gene Machine "Reading The Secret Body is like spending time with an eloquent, well-connected and entertaining enthusiast who has intimate knowledge of the secret worlds that lie within all of us" – Roger Highfield

• Shopping Cart

Advanced Search

• Browse Our Shelves
• Best Sellers
• Digital Audiobooks
• Featured Titles
• New This Week
• Staff Recommended
• Suggestions for Kids
• Fiction Suggestions
• Nonfiction Suggestions
• Reading Lists
• Upcoming Events
• Ticketed Events
• Science Book Talks
• Past Events
• Video Archive
• Online Gift Codes
• University Clothing
• Goods & Gifts from Harvard Book Store
• Hours & Directions
• Newsletter Archive
• Frequent Buyer Program
• Signed First Edition Club
• Signed New Voices in Fiction Club
• Harvard Square Book Circle
• Off-Site Book Sales
• Corporate & Special Sales
• Print on Demand

• All Our Shelves
• Academic New Arrivals
• New Hardcover - Biography
• New Hardcover - Fiction
• New Hardcover - Nonfiction
• New Titles - Paperback
• African American Studies
• Anthologies
• Anthropology / Archaeology
• Architecture
• Asia & The Pacific
• Astronomy / Geology
• Boston / Cambridge / New England
• Business & Management
• Career Guides
• Child Care / Childbirth / Adoption
• Children's Board Books
• Children's Picture Books
• Children's Activity Books
• Children's Beginning Readers
• Children's Middle Grade
• Children's Gift Books
• Children's Nonfiction
• Children's/Teen Graphic Novels
• Teen Nonfiction
• Young Adult
• Classical Studies
• Cognitive Science / Linguistics
• College Guides
• Cultural & Critical Theory
• Education - Higher Ed
• Environment / Sustainablity
• European History
• Exam Preps / Outlines
• Games & Hobbies
• Gender Studies / Gay & Lesbian
• Gift / Seasonal Books
• Globalization
• Graphic Novels
• Hardcover Classics
• Health / Fitness / Med Ref
• Islamic Studies
• Large Print
• Latin America / Caribbean
• Law & Legal Issues
• Literary Crit & Biography
• Local Economy
• Mathematics
• Media Studies
• Middle East
• Myths / Tales / Legends
• Native American
• Paperback Favorites
• Performing Arts / Acting
• Personal Finance
• Personal Growth
• Photography
• Physics / Chemistry
• Poetry Criticism
• Ref / English Lang Dict & Thes
• Ref / Foreign Lang Dict / Phrase
• Reference - General
• Religion - Christianity
• Religion - Comparative
• Religion - Eastern
• Romance & Erotica
• Science Fiction
• Short Introductions
• Technology, Culture & Media
• Theology / Religious Studies
• Travel Atlases & Maps
• Travel Lit / Adventure
• Urban Studies
• Wines And Spirits
• Women's Studies
• World History
• Writing Style And Publishing

The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live

“A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling.”—Bill Bryson

A revolutionary new vision of human biology and the scientific breakthroughs that will transform our lives Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cells. Imagine being able to monitor your body's well-being, or have a diet tailored to your microbiome.  The Secret Body  reveals how these and other stunning breakthroughs and technologies are transforming our understanding of how the human body works, what it is capable of, how to protect it from disease, and how we might manipulate it in the future. Taking readers to the cutting edge of research, Daniel Davis shows how radical new possibilities are becoming realities thanks to the visionary efforts of scientists who are revealing the invisible and secret universe within each of us. Focusing on six important frontiers, Davis describes what we are learning about cells, the development of the fetus, the body's immune system, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome—areas of human biology that are usually understood in isolation. Bringing them together here for the first time, Davis offers a new vision of the human body as a biological wonder of dizzying complexity and possibility. Written by an award-winning scientist at the forefront of this adventure,  The Secret Body  is a gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of the dawning revolution in human health.

There are no customer reviews for this item yet.

Classic Totes

Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more!

Shipping & Pickup

We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail!

Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club!

Join our Signed First Edition Club (or give a gift subscription) for a signed book of great literary merit, delivered to you monthly.

Harvard Square's Independent Bookstore

© 2024 Harvard Book Store All rights reserved

Contact Harvard Book Store 1256 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138

Tel (617) 661-1515 Toll Free (800) 542-READ Email [email protected]

View our current hours »

Join our bookselling team »

We plan to remain closed to the public for two weeks, through Saturday, March 28 While our doors are closed, we plan to staff our phones, email, and harvard.com web order services from 10am to 6pm daily.

Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 9am - 11pm Sunday: 10am - 10pm

Holiday Hours 12/24: 9am - 7pm 12/25: closed 12/31: 9am - 9pm 1/1: 12pm - 11pm All other hours as usual.

Map Find Harvard Book Store »

Online Customer Service Shipping » Online Returns » Privacy Policy »

Harvard University harvard.edu »

• Clubs & Services

So Much to Take In

By christine m. skolnik january 12, 2018.

Secret Body by Jeffrey Kripal

Christine Skolnik is a writer, environmental activist, and adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

LARB Contributor

LARB Staff Recommendations

Books of revelation: christianity and miracles in the life and work of denis johnson.

Brian Dille, who was Denis Johnson’s friend, gives his perspective on how Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous informed the “Jesus’ Son” author’s...

Brian B. Dille Dec 21, 2017

Philosophy Needs a New Definition

Costica Bradatan says we need a Sufi master (or Plato) to enlarge our understanding of philosophy.

Costica Bradatan Dec 17, 2017

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?

LARB  publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!

• Share on twitter
• Share on facebook

Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions, by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Maryanne saunders enjoys an original look at how faith is studied and ‘what humans may become’.

• Share on linkedin
• Share on mail

A few pages into Secret Body , the reader is met with a disclaimer, “If you seek an established, respectable, fully rational, fully defensible program for the study of religion, then go elsewhere.” Instead, Rice University professor Jeffrey Kripal presents us with a compilation of theories, cultural references and anecdotes making up an impassioned thesis about the future of religious studies and “what human beings may become”.

Kripal, who describes his worldview as “a kind of liberal, rational, agnostic mysticism”, jumps excitedly from one topic to another. He starts by reflecting on his 2008 essay “On the fiction of a straight Jesus”, taking the reader through his formative experiences with the Catholic Church, his psychoanalytical awakening and subsequent study of Hindu mysticism and tantric literature. In what is one of the book’s most engaging sections, Kripal entwines his own story with that of his work – the repressed “heterophobic” structures of Christianity.

Recalling his time in a Catholic seminary, he suggests that while a loving, virtually romantic relationship with Jesus is encouraged in monastic environments, any notion of carnal desire remains taboo. So although homoerotic subtexts are present, if unacknowledged, in Church traditions, consensual sexual relationships between men and women are never celebrated in the way we find in Hindu narratives. Kripal implores scholars of religion not to be afraid of sexuality and its rightful place in the history and continued practice of religions – “with all this implies about the roles that gender, sexual orientation and human physiology play in religious experience”.

As the work progresses, we are introduced to more of the author’s oeuvre spanning 20 years. Discussions range from the relationship between ethics and spirituality to Asian mysticism and 1960s American counterculture in what could be a daunting read for those uninitiated in Kripal’s previous work. Alongside the anthology is a somewhat verbose outline of his belief that, in light of recent political events in the US, academics should be reaching out to the public. He comments thoughtfully on what he sees as the US public’s warped relationship with religion and patriotism and observes that people are feeling compelled to prioritise their religious identities above their humanity, creating ill-informed hostility.

Search our database of more than 7,000 global university jobs

The trouble with Kripal’s ambition to open up the conversation surrounding these issues is that readers may sometimes feel as if they have joined in halfway. It is not clear who the audience for this book is meant to be. At times the author seems to be addressing his peers, presenting lengthy defences of his previous work and employing complex terminology. Yet some sections are humorous, light-hearted and accessible.

For all its eccentricities, Kripal’s work is playful, engaging and original. His references to both “high” and “low” culture are reminiscent of prominent intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Slavoj Žižek. His earnest encouragement of scholars to be more open and his rejection of sceptical approaches – “scholars are not religiously inept and disciples are not dumb” – is both heartening and timely. Secret Body may not be fully rational or fully defensible, but it certainly is an enjoyable read.

Maryanne Saunders is a PhD student in religion and the arts at King’s College London .

Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions By Jeffrey J. Kripal University of Chicago Press, 448pp, £34.00 ISBN 9780226126821 and 6491486 (e-book) Published 11 December 2017

POSTSCRIPT:

Print headline:  A pilgrimage into the future

Register to continue

Why register?

• Registration is free and only takes a moment
• Once registered, you can read 3 articles a month
• Sign up for our newsletter

Or subscribe for unlimited access to:

• Unlimited access to news, views, insights & reviews
• Digital editions
• Digital access to THE’s university and college rankings analysis

Already registered or a current subscriber? Login

Related articles

Visions of Sodom: Religion, Homoerotic Desire, and the End of the World in England, c.1550-1850, by H. G. Cocks

Peter J. Smith lauds a powerful study of the relationship between homoerotic desire and anxieties about social, religious, cultural and even apocalyptic collapse

Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress, by Elizabeth Bucar

Reina Lewis applauds an insightful analysis of women’s ‘pious fashion’ in Muslim cultures

You might also like

Richard Sennett: ‘I’ve always felt like a fish out of water in academia’

The feted urban sociologist Richard Sennett tells Matthew Reisz about how his former career as a cellist inspired his latest trilogy of books, why his ideal university would be more night school than Oxbridge college and why it helps him to imagine his readers as female biologists

Alan Johnson: ‘Tuition fees almost brought down Blair government’

As higher education minister in the Blair government, Alan Johnson steered plans for top-up fees of £3,000 through Parliament. As he returns to the sector in a new role, the former postman talks to John Morgan about why fee-funded university expansion remains the best hope for creating a fairer UK

Next generation of humanities scholars ‘imperilled’ by PhD cuts

Arts and Humanities Research Council funding ‘has been some sort of oasis, but it too is now quickly drying up’

Featured jobs

‘The Body Keeps the Score’ offers uncertain science in the name of self-help. It’s not alone.

Some best-selling books express great confidence in theories of the brain that are still in their unproven infancy.

On the first page of “ The Grieving Brain ,” the neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor writes: “Poets, writers, and artists have given us moving renderings of the almost indescribable nature of loss. … As human beings, we seem compelled to try to communicate what our grief is like, to describe carrying this burden.” In her book, published by the imprint Harper One (tagline: “Books that transform and inspire”), O’Connor seeks to tell us what all those poets, writers and artists couldn’t about grief: why we feel it, from the standpoint of neuroscience.

O’Connor, who directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress (GLASS) lab at the University of Arizona, was among the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans to study grief. When her first study on the neuroanatomy of grief was published in the early 2000s, fMRI technology was only about a decade old and was seen as a revolutionary breakthrough in modern neuroscience — itself only a few decades older. The giant magnets of an fMRI machine detect the iron in oxygenated red blood cells; the resulting scans depict the changes in oxygenated blood flow that coincide with brain activity. This technology promised to show which parts of the brain “lit up” when a patient was performing a particular task, seemingly giving neuroscientists the ability to map the brain and chart where each particular emotion, thought or action originates.

“The Grieving Brain” represents O’Connor’s attempt to translate her fMRI-based research for a general audience. In this, it joins a genre that psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk popularized with “ The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma ” (2014). In recent years, van der Kolk’s book, with its Matisse-bedecked cover, invaded social media, rendering it both a meme and a sleeper bestseller — it has stayed near the top of the New York Times paperback nonfiction list for 248 weeks, more than 4½ years. “The Body Keeps the Score” found an eager and sizable audience because it boiled down complex ideas about the physiological and behavioral effects of trauma — the visceral ways we feel mental pain, the lasting role of early adversity in the patterns we fall into as adults — into explanations that feel intuitively true. We have all felt our guts clench and pulses quicken in moments of fear or anguish; we have all questioned why we can’t control our emotional reactions.

I first picked up “The Grieving Brain” for the same reason that I read “The Body Keeps the Score” the year before: I wanted to understand how a series of firing neurons can suddenly leave me in tears when I get an unexpected reminder of my parents, who both died of cancer about 20 years ago, when I was a young teen. More than that, I wanted the objectivity and rationality of science to impose order on my grief.

Reading “The Body Keeps the Score,” I realized that my experience of losing my parents — while devastating and life-altering — wasn’t traumatic, exactly; at least not by van der Kolk’s definition, making me wonder why so many readers had slogged through its dense descriptions of brain activity. As science journalist Eleanor Cummins argued in the Atlantic , when researchers like van der Kolk talk about “trauma,” they mean something quite different than the everyday discomfort imposed by, say, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. In the psychiatric world, ruled by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, trauma manifests in physical and emotional wounds from experiences like combat, or surviving horrific accidents or acts of violence.

My feelings around my parents’ deaths may not result from trauma, but they are definitely grief. As I read “The Grieving Brain,” I encountered descriptions that mirrored some of my emotions back to me: my anguish over not being able to locate my parents on this earthly plane, my yearning to be close to them. But I questioned why I had sought an “objective,” neurobiological stamp of approval on what I had already known about how and why humans suffer when we are bereaved: We long for our dead, we face the need to adapt to a world without them in it, we dwell on what our lives would be like if our dead had instead lived. Even O’Connor acknowledges early on that she does “not believe that a neuroscientific perspective on grief is any better than a sociological, a religious, or an anthropological one,” but she feels that “neuroscience is part of the conversation of our times.”

Our interest in talking about what’s going on inside our brains isn’t new, but received neuroscientific wisdom is now recirculating in new mediums, calcifying into consensus that we can’t stop parroting. Most Americans have poor scientific literacy — as the pandemic attests — and yet we cannot get enough of using the language of neuroscience to talk about our brains and seeking self-help solutions to what we think ails us neurologically.

Beyond “The Grieving Brain” and “The Body Keeps the Score,” publishing has cashed in on these desires in recent years with bestsellers such as psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey’s “ What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing ,” biologist and neurologist Robert M. Sapolsky’s “ Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst ,” and clinical psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s “ How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain .” More such books are forthcoming: “Brain performance coach” Nicole Vignola — who has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and more than 300,000 people following her advice on Instagram — recently sold “Rewire: The Neuroscience of a Good Life” to Harper One and 12 other publishers worldwide. The book, pitched as a “toolkit for shifting deeply ingrained brain behavioral patterns,” is due out next spring.

The more I learned about how much some of these books overplay what neuroscience can currently tell us about the brain and human behavior, the more I thought that the self-helpification of a relatively young and incredibly complex field of scientific study is not so helpful after all. We keep consulting neuroscience — even when its findings are disproven or overblown — to explain the human condition, and often to validate what we want to believe or what we already know. Tracing all of our messy emotions, reactions and habits to the workings of electrical currents and neurochemicals lets us off the hook.

H umans have been trying to understand the brain since the time of Hippocrates; neuroscience is still in its toddlerhood. Western physicians didn’t even know what the brain looked like until the mid-16th century, when the Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius illustrated what he observed via autopsies and dissections in “De Humani Corporis Fabrica.” Vesalius’s empirical drawings finally unseated theories put forward in the second century that the brain was composed of four fluid-filled ventricles through which the “pneuma physicon,” or animal spirit, flowed.

It wasn’t until 1848, when a railroad construction foreman named Phineas Gage survived an accident in which an iron rod was driven through his head, that it was proved that different areas of the brain are responsible for different functions. That breakthrough initially seemed to back up some of the tenets of phrenology , a pseudoscience that studied bumps on the skull and offered “evidence” for racist ideas — namely, that characteristics such as benevolence were controlled by “organs,” or areas, of the brain.

As recently as the mid-20th century, doctors performed lobotomies on people deemed mentally ill, severing the connection between the thalamus and the frontal lobe. Neuroscientists like Walter Freeman, the biggest evangelist for the lobotomy in the United States, believed that psychosis was caused by endlessly circling thoughts and that cutting off the prefrontal cortex would break the circuit.

It’s worth remembering that as we advance in our understanding, what we know about the brain — such a key part of what makes us human — will inevitably be revised, refined and sometimes proved wrong. The imaging revolution, starting with the invention of the positron emission tomography (PET) scanner and the MRI in the 1970s, seemed to bring neuroscience out of the dark ages. But the fMRI scan, which is just over 30 years old, has already had episodes of comeuppance. In 2009, a neuroscientist put a dead salmon through an fMRI and detected activity in its dead brain, showing how easy it is to produce a false positive when sorting through the statistical noise of these scans. Beyond statistical dangers, there’s an even more fundamental problem of interpreting what fMRI scans depict. A scan can correctly identify the areas of a person’s brain that are receiving blood flow at a particular moment, but we can’t definitively say that activation of a brain region equals a particular emotional or cognitive state. An activated amygdala can be pointed to as proof of negative emotions like fear, stress or anxiety, but also positive ones, like happiness.

More recent reevaluation of fMRI scans taken while subjects are triggered to feel certain emotions — the kind that O’Connor and van der Kolk have deployed in their research and write about in their books — has further revealed their limitations. In 2020, Ahmad Hariri, a Duke University professor of psychology and neuroscience, led a team that conducted a reanalysis of 56 published academic studies based on fMRI analysis, and found that when an individual has their brain scanned in an fMRI, the results are not replicable on a second scan. You can have the same person conduct the same task while in an fMRI scanner a few months later and get a different readout of brain activation. While bad fMRI data will probably not lead to the same horrors as phrenology and lobotomies, it’s not hard to imagine how these scans could be manipulated to diagnose people with psychiatric illnesses they may not have, or to deny insurance coverage for treatments they need.

And yet books that tout the results of fMRI studies are still being marketed to everyday readers who aren’t up to date on issues of psychological science. These books propose that the findings of fMRI studies provide groundbreaking insight into human emotions and behaviors. These claims play into the motivations of everyone involved in the intersection of neuroscience and self-help, like the scientists who get to promote the real-world applicability of their work outside of the academy (and thus gain fame within it) and the publishers who are willing to shell out hefty advances for books that promise to meet readers’ endless appetite to understand why they feel bad — and promise solutions. At best, these books oversimplify and overstate the takeaways of neuroscientific research; at worst, they rehash neuroscientific ideas that are already outmoded.

I n “The Grieving Brain,” O’Connor constantly hedges when writing about the status of knowledge in the field. Here she is on mirror neurons, brain cells that TikTok users can’t get enough of. She’s using them to explain how “neural machinery” helps us feel close to others, and later how our brains struggle when we cannot be close to our dead: “If you show a monkey that you are doing something with your hand — grasping a banana, for example — some of his same neurons will fire when he watches you grasp the banana as when he grasps the banana himself.” Immediately following this clunky explanation, she inserts a caveat that I had never seen issued in discussions of mirror neurons, which come up frequently to explain empathy: “Despite the widespread interest in mirror neurons, human neuroimaging does not have sufficiently high definition to detect individual mirror neurons in humans.”

In “The Body Keeps the Score,” van der Kolk writes about those same monkey experiments on mirror neurons, calling them “one of the truly sensational discoveries of modern neuroscience.” He obscures the distinction between monkeys and humans, though: “Numerous other experiments followed around the world, and it soon became clear that mirror neurons explained many previously unexplainable aspects of the mind, such as empathy, imitation, synchrony, and even the development of language.” This makes it sound like experiments on humans followed. Yes, we are closely related to the macaque monkeys used in these studies, but the connection between our evolutionary lines diverged 25 million years ago. Our brains are capable of more than monkey brains, and not just because they are bigger.

Beyond the hyperbole common when neuroscience crosses over into self-help is the popularization of theories that have already been disproved. “The Body Keeps the Score” takes the prize in this realm. Van der Kolk is totally credulous when it comes to researcher Stephen Porges’s ideas about the vagus nerve, a central component of the parasympathetic nervous system that controls basic bodily functions such as digestion and resting heart rate.

As van der Kolk sees it, Porges’s polyvagal theory explains why, when faced with danger, people respond in different ways. When we collapse or disengage in a dangerous situation, van der Kolk says, we’ve been taken over by the dorsal vagal complex, “an evolutionarily ancient part of the parasympathetic nervous system.” Except the dorsal vagal complex hasn’t actually been proved to exist in humans. Some of van der Kolk’s readers spread this theory further on Instagram carousels about trauma-informed parenting and breathing and stretching exercises to help you move from “freeze + disassociation states to calm and connection states.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, van der Kolk also buys into the triune brain model, as do many therapists on social media. Maybe you’ve heard of it as your “lizard brain” or “reptilian brain” — the idea that humans have a primitive brain center that acts on instinct. The triune brain model, developed in the mid-20th century by neuroscientist Paul MacLean , has long been considered nonsense by most neuroscientists; the theory was first disproved back in the 1970s. Van der Kolk proposes that when we are pulled back into trauma, we behave like lizards. People still love this explanation — like mirror neurons, it’s all over TikTok.

Van der Kolk must be aware that his peers have long discredited the idea of the “reptilian brain,” but he continues to give it the sheen of scientific credibility in his work, perhaps because it speaks to something a large audience wants to hear: If some of our worst reactions stem from a primitive, animalistic part of our brains, we are not really responsible for them.

Neuroscientific self-help books scratch the same itch as labeling everything a trauma response , self-diagnosing ADHD and treating mental health diagnosis like a giant BuzzFeed quiz . They superimpose order on the messiness of emotions, telling us that looking inside the brain can explain why we feel so out of control. With neat answers come neat solutions, as though we can life-hack some of the hardest parts of being a person — grieving our loved ones, grappling with the long effects of trauma. But there is no remedy for the human condition, and implying that it’s all in our heads makes our pain seem like a glitch instead of a feature.

Kristen Martin is a cultural critic based in Philadelphia. Her debut narrative nonfiction book on American orphanhood is forthcoming from Bold Type Books.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Book Review – The Secret

The Secret is a phenomenon. Since the book debuted late in 2006 it has sold over four million copies with some thirty other translations now available or underway. It is likely to become one of the best-selling self-help books of all time and is being constantly praised and endorsed by celebrities. Venture into your local bookstore or look around you while waiting at an airport, and you’re bound to see people reading it and absorbing it. They will not just be people who consult astrologers and who listen to Tony Robbins tapes, but normal, average people like the ones who live next door to you. There are almost 1400 reviews of the book printed at Amazon with an average rating of 3.5 out of 5. The breakdown of those scores is interesting: fifty-two percent of them are 5-star, thirteen percent are 4-star and twenty-one percent are 1-star (Amazon does not allow a 0 rating). This means that the majority of people, the great majority even, believe in at least some aspects of the book’s premise and teaching. They believe in the law of attraction.

The Secret began as a DVD. Rhonda Byrne had faced a particularly difficult time in life and came out of it only after she learned The Secret, which is her term for what is commonly known as the law of attraction. In gratitude she created a DVD presentation to share this knowledge and, having seen the remarkable success of this DVD (which has sold in excess of 1.5 million copies), she created a book by the same name. The claims are lofty: “There isn’t a single thing that you cannot do with this knowledge. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, The Secret can give you whatever you want.” Imagine that: the power to get absolutely anything. Who can resist that claim?

The law of attraction, which Byrne says is the most powerful law in the universe, states that people experience the logical manifestations of their predominant thoughts, feelings, and words. This gives people direct control over their lives. A person’s thoughts (whether conscious or unconscious) and feelings bring about corresponding positive or negative manifestations. Positive thoughts bring about positive manifestations while negative thoughts bring about negative manifestations. The theory is very simple. Because it is an absolute law, the law of attraction will always respond to your thoughts no matter what they are. Thus your thoughts become things. You are the most powerful power in the universe simply because whatever you think about will come to be. You shape the world that exists around you. You shape your own life and destiny through the power of your mind.

The steps to utilizing this law in life are simple and supposedly founded upon the wisdom of Jesus as we read it in Matthew 21:22. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” The law of attraction demands only this:

• Know what you want and ask the universe for it.
• Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way.
• Be open to receiving it.

There are aspects of this law that are clearly attractive to the human heart. We all like to think that we have ultimate control over our lives and that we can have anything we want. We all want to control our destinies and to feel that the universe is at our beck and call–that it is a friendly force working with and not against us. This is, I am convinced, what draws people to the law of attraction.

But there are many areas in which The Secret has nothing to offer–in which the law of attraction as the most powerful law in the universe is simply an incomplete, irrational and even depressing answer. Allow me to suggest a few.

First, The Secret has no real ability to respond to the problem of human evil–surely the greatest problem anyone can face.

First, The Secret has no real ability to respond to the problem of human evil–surely the greatest problem anyone can face. Byrne admits that people’s first thoughts, when they hear of the law, is to think of times where masses of people lost their lives. According to the law of attraction, these people were necessarily on the same frequency as the event that took their lives. They may not have had thoughts of the event, but somehow their negative thoughts drew them into it. But this simply does not prove a satisfying answer to the world’s problems. Does this not mean that the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust were ultimately responsible for thinking negative thoughts that summoned this even to them? Does it not force us to believe that the people who died when the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 were responsible for calling this negative situation to themselves? Does it not mean that a young girl is ultimately responsible for the years of sexual abuse her father imposed upon her? The Secret offers nothing to these people but the understanding that their suffering is somehow their own fault. When we look at The Secret as the law that can bring you anything you want it has a clear attraction; when we look at it from the perspective of one who has suffered, it is clearly flawed.

The law of attraction continues in logical progression until it arrives at the inevitable end result of ascribing divinity to humanity.

Second, the law works itself out in ways that are breathtaking for their selfishness. For example, Byrne warns against listening to people speak about their illnesses or problems lest you begin to think negative thoughts and begin to manifest the negative consequences in your own life. She warns against sacrifice, either financial or personal, saying that sacrifice makes you prove your belief in lack rather than in abundance. She tells you to always place yourself first and to always look out for your own interests ahead of anyone else’s. She puts you in the place of God, as the one who stands at the center of the universe. The law of attraction continues in logical progression until it arrives at the inevitable end result of ascribing divinity to humanity.

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret.

She goes on: “You are God in physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet.” The law offers no higher power than yourself. This makes me wonder: what would the world look like if everyone followed The Secret and devoted themselves primarily to their own interests, forsaking compassion and sacrifice and other “negative” elements of life?

Third, the law, at least insofar as it is described in this book, makes no allowance for what happens when desires clash. What happens when two people set their thoughts on the same thing? While I understand that the universe offers infinite opportunities, can two people equally have the same thing? What happens when what one person wants is harmful to another person? What if one person’s pleasure is another person’s pain? If the law of attraction is the highest law in the universe, it must be that there is nothing to govern such cases.

Finally, the law also works in ways that defy both common sense and human experience. For example, when considering weight loss Byrne makes the unbelievable claim that food can only make you fat if you think it can make you fat. If you determine that food is unable to make you gain weight, you can eat as much as you want and never gain wait or suffer any ill effects. When considering health she suggests that we can heal ourselves of any affliction simply through the power of our minds. Interestingly, The Secret has been championed by Oprah Winfrey who offers her own life as testimony to the power of the law of attraction. The week after Oprah’s endorsement sales of The Secret jumped from 18,000 to 101,000. The week after a second endorsement sales rose to 190,000. Winfrey has since had to soften her enthusiasm as people were following the book’s advice to the extent that they were forgoing medical treatment, believing in the power of their thoughts to heal themselves. Doctors were unimpressed, as were the diseases and disorders which did not respond to the mind’s attempts to destroy them. Byrne even says that the law of attraction can grant immortality. Yet the people who teach this law seem to be aging at the same rate as the rest of us.

As I read The Secret it occurred to me that if the Bible were a product of human minds it would undoubtedly resemble something like this: a celebration of humanity, a portrayal of humans as divine, and probably the most idolatrous thing I’ve ever read. Within the Bible, in the first chapter of the book of Romans, God addresses this desperate desire to rid ourselves of God’s claim to our lives. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts…because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” And amen. The Secret claims to be able to give us everything we could ever want. Yet it can’t even address the fundamental problems of human nature. It represents only the latest in a long line of attempts to revoke God that has continued since the first man turned his back on His Creator. There’s nothing new here but the fancy, twenty-first century packaging.

What God Wants You To Forget

We are never far from reminding God of our credentials, of providing him with a curriculum vitae that lays out all we are, all we have been through, and all we have accomplished for his sake. We are never far from making the subtle turn from grace to merit, from what is freely given to…

A La Carte (March 27)

A La Carte: New music / Millennials and GenZ / Scotland’s new hate crime law / Cate Blanchett, Easter is for you / Why the Reformed pray for revival / What truly happened to Jesus on the cross? / and more.

New and Notable Christian Books for March 2024

As you know, I like to do my best to sort through the new Christian books that are released each month to see what stands out as being not only new, but also particularly notable. I received quite a number of new titles in March and narrowed the list down to the ones below. I…

A La Carte (March 26)

A La Carte: God delivers from the suffering he ordains / The beautiful partnership of family and church / The end of religious liberty / On whales, menopause, and thanks to God / Ordinary women, extravagant gifts / and more.

Marriage : A Dance of Beauty and Chaos

This sponsored post was provided by Burke Care, and written by Jen Arend, which invites you to schedule care today with a certified biblical counselor. As the music swells, she begins her descent down the aisle. All eyes are on her, especially her groom. She is radiant, majestic, and filled with beauty. Her gaze meets his tear-filled…

Does God Care How You Cook Your Goat?

It is one of those biblical commands that has always perplexed me. If it appeared just one time in Scripture I might be tempted to pass it by. But it appears no less than three times, in Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. The repetition tells me that God is quite concerned that his…

Explore More

Collections & series.

Book Reviews

All collections and series →

Bible biography Bonhoeffer books Christian living church current issues disability marriage parenting personal prayer sin suffering theology

All topics →

Top Scripture References

Genesis 1 Genesis 3 Psalm 119 Matthew 18 John 3:16 John 10:10 Romans 1 Romans 8:28 Romans 12:2 Ephesians 5 Philippians 4:8 Colossians 3:16

All Scripture references →

Recent Dates

• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023

All dates →

The Purple Bookmark

Discover the magical world of books

• Hidden gems
• hidden gens
• Non fiction
• Short stories
• Worth the Hype

The Secret| Book Review| Rhonda Byrne

Author: Rhonda Byrne

Writing: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4/5

Overall: 4.5/5

Genre: Spirituality/Self help.

“ Here’s the problem. Most people are thinking about what they don’t want, and they’re wondering why it shows up over and over again ”- John Assaraf

From time immemorial, the knowledge of how to create your destiny has been passed down. It has been learned and used by a lot of inventors and great thinkers. This ‘secret’ that holds the power to change the face of humanity as well as our individual lives has now been unveiled in this magical book.

The author Rhonda Byrne describes the Law of Attraction as a Universal power that is as true as the laws of physics. Something that can be harnessed to attract abundance. To create a life that you will love to live. The only investment that it will need is your thoughts. Think positive and abundant thoughts and the same will come back to you. In this law of the Universe, like attracts like. A great emphasis has also been placed on gratitude and visualization. You cannot receive more of something unless you are thankful for what you already have.

“I always say, when the voice and the vision on the inside become more profound, clear and loud than the opinions on the outside, you’ve mastered your life.” – Dr. John Demartini

My opinion on The Secret

When I had initially picked up this book to read in my college days, I found the concepts slightly difficult to wrap my head around. As I progressed through the book, I realized every little thought and idea was explained in great detail. The main idea is explained in a variety of different ways so that every reader will understand the gist of it. Initially, some parts might seem a bit repetitive but it seems like the secret does not only have to be taught but ingrained in your mind and hence the repetition makes sense.

One particular metaphor that I liked was that of Aladdin and the lamp from which a Genie appears. The Genie always says one thing, ‘Your wish is my command’. So, whatever you think, say or act upon is assumed to be what you want by the Genie. He will fulfil your wish no matter what. That is exactly how the Universe works. Once it knows what you want, it will rearrange circumstances to make your wish come true.  

This book is filled with quotes by great thinkers and success stories of the law of attraction. Tales of how people have been successful in manifesting love, relationships, money and desired careers have been described in detail. It has dedicated chapters for each aspect of life. Some exercises are also included that you can practice to invite abundance. All in all, it’s a lovely introduction to this Universal power.

The Law of attraction has been very helpful in my journey as well. Everyone should give this book a try, regardless of whether they believe in the law of attraction or not. I would recommend it. However, it’s essential to keep an open mind about it.

There is also a movie with the same name. It is the knowledge from that movie that has been compiled into this book. This book is also part of a series of books by Rhonda Byrne written about the Law of attraction. Some of the people who know about this book say that they enjoyed the audiobook version more than the written one as it inspires them more. I have personally enjoyed both.

So, do you believe in the law of attraction? Have you ever used it? I would love to hear your stories in the comments.

If you like this book, you would also love to read the other books from this series: The Power, The Magic, The Greatest Secret, Hero, How the Secret changed my life: Real People.

5 thoughts on “ The Secret| Book Review| Rhonda Byrne ”

Hi, this is a comment. To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard. Commenter avatars come from Gravatar .

Howdy! Would you mind if I share your blog with my twitter group? There’s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content. Please let me know. Cheers

A big thank you for appreciating my work! It really means a lot. I will very happy if you could share it with people who will find my posts interesting and informative.

Wow, superb weblog layout! How long have you been running a blog for? you made blogging look easy. The whole glance of your website is great, as neatly as the content material! You can see similar: najlepszy sklep and here dobry sklep

Thank you so much for the appreciation! I have been blogging for the past six months.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

ankitachodankar12

Related posts, perfect timing | jill mansell | book review, koi good news | zareen khan| book review, 5 things to learn from sadhguru’s ‘death’.

Advertisement

Supported by

Book Review

Anne lamott has written classics. this is not one of them..

Slim and precious, “Somehow: Thoughts on Love” doesn’t measure up to her best nonfiction.

  By Alexandra Jacobs

How Did Fan Culture Take Over? And Why Is It So Scary?

Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment, online arcana and conspiracy theory.

  By Joshua Ferris

A Sugary Bonbon of a Novel From a Legendary Foodie

In “The Paris Novel,” Ruth Reichl is a glutton for wish fulfillment.

  By Mattie Kahn

Lord Byron Was Hard to Pin Down. That’s What Made Him Great.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading.

  By Benjamin Markovits

That Time Europe Tried to Bring Monarchy Back to Mexico

In “Habsburgs on the Rio Grande,” Raymond Jonas’s story of French-backed nation building in Mexico foreshadows the proxy battles of the Cold War.

  By Natasha Wheatley

Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book

Reading picks from Book Review editors, guaranteed to suit any mood.

  By The New York Times Books Staff

17 Works of Nonfiction Coming This Spring

Memoirs from Brittney Griner and Salman Rushdie, a look at pioneering Black ballerinas, a new historical account from Erik Larson — and plenty more.

  By Cody Delistraty

27 Works of Fiction Coming This Spring

Stories by Amor Towles, a sequel to Colm Toibin’s “Brooklyn,” a new thriller by Tana French and more.

  By Kate Dwyer

Best-Seller Lists: April 28, 2024

All the lists: print, e-books, fiction, nonfiction, children’s books and more.

Books of The Times

Long Before Trump, Immigrant Detention Was Arbitrary and Cruel

“In the Shadow of Liberty,” by the historian Ana Raquel Minian, chronicles America’s often brutal treatment of noncitizens, including locking them up without charge.

  By Jennifer Szalai

Salman Rushdie Reflects on His Stabbing in a New Memoir

“Knife” is an account of the writer’s brush with death in 2022, and the long recovery that followed.

  By Dwight Garner

For Caleb Carr, Salvation Arrived on Little Cat’s Feet

As he struggled with writing and illness, the “Alienist” author found comfort in the feline companions he recalls in a new memoir, “My Beloved Monster.”

Savages! Innocents! Sages! What Do We Really Know About Early Humans?

In “The Invention of Prehistory,” the historian Stefanos Geroulanos argues that many of our theories about our remote ancestors tell us more about us than them.

Delmore Schwartz’s Poems Are Like Salt Flicked on the World

A new omnibus compiles the poet’s books and unpublished work, including his two-part autobiographical masterpiece, “Genesis.”

Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In.

Focusing on disaster hasn’t changed the planet’s trajectory. Will a more upbeat approach show a way forward?

By Alexis Soloski

2 Books That Capture New York

A stroll around the city with a great stylist; a comic novel of love and real estate.

Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies

Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection.

By Jonathan Kandell

6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week

Selected paperbacks from the Book Review, including titles by Quentin Tarantino, Elizabeth Kolbert, Tyriek White and more.

By Shreya Chattopadhyay

Books Bound in Human Skin: An Ethical Quandary at the Library

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

By Jennifer Schuessler and Julia Jacobs

Spooks, Sleuths and the Nazi Origins of the War on Drugs

Three books describe the work of government investigators who want to uncover or bury the truth.

By John Knight

A Quite Contrary Alphabet Book Asks, How Did Our Gardens Grow?

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history.

By Celia McGee

A Stunning Visual Celebration of Black Rodeo

A new photo book reorients dusty notions of a classic American pastime.

By Walker Mimms

9 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

Jorie Graham’s Poetry of the Earth and Humanity, Set to Music

The composer Matthew Aucoin, Graham’s former student, and the director Peter Sellars have adapted her poems into the operatic “Music for New Bodies.”

By Joshua Barone

• Top Interviews
• Influencers & Celebrities
• Founders & CEO's
• EMN Membership
• Corporate & CXO's
• Entertainment

An Honest Review of ‘The Secret’ by Rhondy Byrne

‘ The Secret’ mentioned in this book supposedly leads you in the direction of achieving anything that you put your mind to. This book by Rhondy Byrne was suggested to me by a close friend. And when I was given the opportunity to write the book review, I felt so excited because there is so much that I want to say about this book.

The Secret is a self-help book that discusses the Law of Attraction. From what I have learned so far, the Law of Attraction is based on three strong pillars of Ask, Believe, and Receive. The book emphasizes on directing your thoughts in a direction that leads you to achieve all your goals. The book also urges you to believe in your thoughts and your potential to achieve whatever you aspire for. 

But like most of the other books, it has some pros and cons, some benefits and downsides. 

To keep my review on an optimistic side, I would like to discuss the pros or the benefits of this book first. 

1. Motivation

I personally felt that The Secret gives a generous amount of motivation to those who wish to achieve anything, whether small or big. If you want a dose of motivation, this book next to perfect. In fact, it urges us to maintain a goal-oriented mindset as it revolves around the idea that you attract whatever you focus your energy and thoughts on. 

This book also shares some insights and effectual strategies that can be put to use. The best thing about the book, according to me, is that it is full of examples that make it easy for us to understand. The examples are quite relatable as well. 

2. Empowerment

Why do you think that 1 percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's designed that way. They understand something. They understand The Secret, and now you are being introduced to The Secret.

These words by Bob Proctor are quoted from page no 6 of The Secret . These words are stuck in my head and they are very correct, according to me. The author further explained this by stating that wealthy people are wealthy because they think about wealth and abundance all the time. They do not allow controversies, negativity, or self-doubt to creep in their heads. They are clear about what they want and chase it tirelessly.

This particular excerpt from the book was very empowering for me. In fact, it urges you to believe in yourself and to believe in what you want, which is crucial for attaining your aim. They scream, “If they can, you too can.” It delivers the message that you can achieve anything if you really put your mind and soul to it.

You are the most powerful magnet in the Universe! You contain a magnetic power within you that is more powerful than anything in this world, and this unfathomable magnetic power is emitted through your thoughts.

These words from page no 7 also felt empowering as they make us realize our existence, uniqueness, and might in the universe. It also reflects how powerful our thoughts can be if we direct them in a constructive direction. 

3. Like Attracts Like

The Law of Attraction, the principle of this book, states that you attract whatever you focus your energy on (good or bad). This works with every aspect of life like relationships, possessions, goals, and anything else you are able to focus on—even your own health. There are various examples in the book to support this. 

But the most relatable for me was the one that highlighted the fact that our mood and our thoughts are affected by simple things like the type of music we listen to. If we are feeling low, sometimes we prefer slow and rather sad melodies over the happy ones. In turn, we feel even more terrible by the sad lyrics and the slow music. This is because we attract more sadness. 

Know more about the Law of Attraction in this video

4. Visualization of the Goals

The best thing about The Secret , according to me, is how it accentuates us to visualize our goals in order to achieve them. It points out that it's not always a straight line between where you are and where you want to go. Furthermore, we can't always detect when things will turn around, but perseverance and a belief in oneself is the key. 

In fact, some people often struggle with achieving even short term goals. This might be because they unconsciously not clear about what they want. They might be in an elusion that they’re clear about their goals but this isn’t always the case. If you’re clear about what you want and believe in yourself, then no one can stop you from achieving what you wish for. 

Positivity has no meaning without negativity, pros cannot be defined without cons and benefits never come without downsides. 

So, I found some downsides to this book as well. These are as per my understanding and my point of view.

1. More About Thoughts and Less About Action

The major downside of The Secret , according to me, is that it talks more of thoughts and less of action. It states that we can also gain expensive cars, enormous house, and wealth just by putting out minds on it. So according to this argument, we can achieve anything and everything by simply sitting on a couch and thinking hard about all the materialistic things. Gaining these things obviously need actions, hard work to be specific. 

This is another downside of this book. It talks so much about materialistic things and little about the internal rewards of our goals. 

2. Rejection And Loss

This book focuses so much on the power of thoughts and it claims that one can attract whatever he/she wants. But there are some things which he simply can’t attract no matter how hard we think about it.

For example, we lose our loved ones. We grieve deeply and we want them back with us at any cost. But no one returns from the dead and that’s a fact. We simply can’t have them back with us. 

There is another example. Many people get rejected in love. They think about that person 24/7 and they want them so badly. They even imagine their ‘happily ever after’ with them even after getting rejected. But just imagining these stories is of often no use. 

3. No Credit Given to Failures

The author seems to believe that we can build million-dollar businesses just by thinking hard about it. A firm belief is obviously important. But in order for a business to survive, top-notch and clever business strategies are equally important. Innovation is another important factor that determines whether a business can stand the test of time or not. 

The Secret by Rhondy Byrne is an exceptional self-help book for the people who know how to put their thoughts into action. But if someone fails to capture the true essence of this book, this can be as a justification of laziness and lack of action. 

Read about more amazing Non-Fiction Books.

Written By - Neha Kundu

Edited By - Kashish Chadha

You may like these posts

Popular posts.

Book Review: Wings of Fire by Dr. Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari

10 Side Effects of Broiler Chicken

Peer Pressure - Advantages and Disadvantages

7 Bad Food Combinations You Must Avoid Completely

The Mystery Behind the Last Door of Padmanabhaswamy Temple

Tsvetina Dimitrova - Our Look is a Mirror Reflecting Our Inner World (Bulgarian Model)

Book Review: 'Home to Heaven' by Pearl S. Buck - Because There's No Place Like Home

Ritu Saraf - Allow Your Passion to Become Your Purpose, and It Will One Day Become Your Profession (Blogger)

Book Review: Something I Never Told You by Shravya Bhinder

Mathikettan Solai: The Forbidden Forest of Tamil Nadu

Footer menu widget.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions