Rating: 
Summary: DIFFERENT, FASCINATIING, ENTIRELY ENTERTAINING
Review: We are in the process of reading Lauren Slater's "Opening Skinner's Box" and find her book far different from any other psychologically-oriented book than we have read previously. This is a work of art that is entirely readable and provokes a good deal of discussion.
Rating:
Summary: penetrating and perspicacious
Review: I like this book in particular because it penetrates to the core truth in each of these experiments, and by doing so reveals something about how we live and who we are. Because a number of these experiments deal with ethical issues, the book forces you to confront your own morality, and to reevaluate your moral code. The only other book I have read that is as forceful as Slater's is Lord Of The Flies.
Rating:
Summary: a revelatory work
Review: Slater's writing is so intense and perceptive it makes people nervous. The psychological establishment has real reasons for trying to blacklist this book; it contains truths that establishment would rather us not know. For instance, Rosenhan's pseudopatient study was, and continues to be, an embarassment to a supposedly scientific field; Alexander's findings challenging the disease model of addiction also present a threat to the substance abuse industry. The only line of defense is to attempt to discredit Slater, and this is shameful. Her book is an important contribution to the field, and its engaging style allows it to be accessible to those outside the field as well. I recommend Opening Skinner's Box without hesitation.
Rating:
Summary: terrific and true
Review: Slater has written an excellent account of ten of the greatest psychological experiments of the last century. I admit a bias, as I was one of her assistants during the time she was researching this book. I am also, however, in a unique position to corroberate many of the accounts she describes in the book; I was actually with her when she "replicated" part of the Rosenhan study, and I sat in on an interview with a Milgram subject as well. The book revolutionizes the way we read and interpret the great experiments, which may be why it evokes such passion in so many psychologists.
Rating: 
Summary: Review of the reviews
Review: I have not read this book yet but wanted to point out a fact to anyone reading these reviews that I found extremely interesting. Of the 19 preceeding reviews, six (6) rate it one star, twelve (12) rate it five stars, and only one rates it in the 2-4 star range. This tells me a lot about the passions evoked by the subject as well as the book.As for me, I am going to take the advice of reviewer oola from NJ United States and preview it at the library first. (PS. I had to put in a rating to post this review so I used a three - middle of the road - to skew the average as little as possible.)
Rating:
Summary: Her Best Work Yet
Review: I have for a long time admired Slater's work in the memoir genre; in her new book she combines her intimite memoir style of writing with stories of the great experiments in the history of psychology. The effect is at once satisfying and stunning. Slater is a superb storyteller; what reviewers often overlook is her gift for language at once poetic and precise. This book is pleasing on so many levels; on a literary level, on a lyrical level, on an intellectual level; it has made my mind wider.
Rating:
Summary: disturbing and fascinating
Review: I am a clinical psychologist, so many of these experiments I had studied during my graduate (and undergraduate) training. Slater's book is brilliant at bringing these experiments back to life, and into the public discourse, with her sharp wit and powerful imagery. I was able to see Stanley Milgram's obediance experiments and Harry Harlow's monkey experiments through a new lens the book made available to me. A lens that shed light on a terrain sometimes chilling, always thick with questions. I thought Slater's chapter on the Rosenhan study was especially fine. The book covers such a huge amount of terrian that it wouldn't surprise me if there were occasional small irrelevant errors (as the NYT reviewer points out) but as for the experiments themselves, Slater's research and reporting are top notch. This is a book I will read and return to many times.
Rating:
Summary: excellent account of the great experiements
Review: This book has impressive breadth, and depth, regarding its subject: great psychological experiments. Some, it appears, have quibbled with errors Slater has made -- the misspelling of a chimpanzee's name, for instance, or the number of saints cannonized since the 1980's. These minute errors detract from the fact that all the great experiments are described in terms that are conceptually and thematically accurate; in addition, the author brings these experiements to life so beautifully and vividly that one is left, at the end of the book, with an indelible sense of 20th century psychology and the tremendous journey it has taken. A terrific read; a credible book.
Rating:
Summary: beware of the smear campaign
Review: Opening Skinner's Box is a beautiful book. In the first chapter, the author describes the legend of B.F. Skinner and the baby he raised in a box, and then utterly dismantles that urban legend, thereby throwing into question many of the predjudices people have regarding behaviorism. B.F. Skinner is presented as a kind and loving father, a brilliant man whose influence still ripples through psychology today. If you happen to scroll down and see the one star review just below this, ignore it. The reviewer claims there is a certain website that calls Slater's research "shoddy" etc. etc., This is simply not true. I went to that website and it says only that Slater wrote about the legend; it never calls her work shoddy or inaccurate. The website doesn't cast dispersions on the book in any way. Buy this book if you want to learn about the great experiments and the people behind them.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Book
Review: It doesn't surprise me that Lauren Slater's incredible book has stirred controversy among a highly educated and accomplished group of amazon.com readers. She has proven herself time and again to challenge accepted tenets, to pose questions that stir minds, to conduct research on her own--outside the safe confines of academia. Her very existence as a public intellectual makes even established academics, often all too comfortable in their ivory towers, squirm. She is a brilliant writer, a psychologist with time well spent in the trenches, and her newest book, an original and fascinating look at some of the most important psychological experiments of the twentieth century, informs, engages, and illuminates the kinds of psychological questions core to our existence. Like most of the reviewers who have reviewed her book here, I too have an advanced degree (Oxford University). I am thus a competent judge of scholarship, and have seen no evidence in Slater's work that would cause me to question her methods or intentions. It's a rare writer who can synthesize highly technical psychological information and interviews, while simultaneously creating and engendering a compelling narrative engine throughout each essay, yet Slater does all, quite masterfully.
|
