Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

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Summary: Creative Insight on a Diverse Array of Topics!
Review: Mullis explains, in narrative form, many of his life experiences ranging from his development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to surfing along the coast of California. This book is great for college students and graduate students who are studying biology and chemistry. Some students believe that all scientists have the same character traits. Usually, scientists are perceived to be anti-social and non-political in nature. This is certainly not the case! This book should send a great message to students of science that you don't have to be the stereotypical scientist in order to pursue a career in research or in teaching. You can still surf and have a social life in the meantime! This book proved to be very insightful and outrageously fun!

Rating:
Summary: Uneven
Review: The author discusses a wide range of issues, such as astrology, the hiv-aids hypothesis, drugs, and other kind of out there things. It's fun reading about his experiences being attacked by grey recluse spiders, possible alien encounters,etc...He makes some nice arguments for things I don't agree with. However, he could have elaborated greatly on most of these issues. The book is way to short to really cover all this. And some of the personal anecdotes are tired, weekend magazine type stuff. So, it was good but could have been much better.

Rating:
Summary: A five star character, but it's hard to detect here
Review: As Mullis says, the Nobel Prize will open any door, once. And, yes, it will sell a few books. I like Mullis, and think PCR is exceptionally important, but this is three star book that feels like the author didn't really care about it... like he'd spent the advance and had to produce something, anything.

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Summary: Scientific Genius as Human Being
Review: I first heard of Kary Mullis in 1994, when I read his Chemistry Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Angewandte Chemie, my favorite Chemistry journal. I was then still employed as a researcher with the company that gave us better living through chemistry. I ended up reading the multi-thousand word account of his speech three times, without pause. It was simply brilliant, yet hardly had a word of science in it! Instead, it focused on what it means to be alive and human. I read "Dancing Naked in The Mind Field" in two sittings when it arrived at my door a few weeks ago. It has much science in it, and a whole lot more of other things. It also deals with the excitement and challenges of living and being human. All of it is worth reading, re-reading, digesting, and learning. A more compact course in critical thinking does not exist. Nor a more humorous one. Dr. Mullis is one of those extremely rare human beings that truly can be classified as a genius. He is equally at home at the forefront of DNA research as he is on his surfboard, at a nightclub, or studying up on planetary motion and its relation to the diversity in human personalities. There is nothing too preposterous for him to rigorously investigate and often attempt, while there appear to be very few commonly accepted "truths" in which he cannot find some fundamental fallacy. These include "truths" handed to us from the dogmatic kingdom of post WWII science. His many anecdotes -- from his curious adventures as a boy to his often hilarious encounters as a world famous scientist -- leave the reader fluctuating between uncontrollable fits of laughter and a deeply serious concern for our over-regulated and blatantly unethical world. Reading Dr. Mullis' not quite humble autobiography left this reader entertained, amazed, embittered but, most of all, inspired. It is essential reading for anyone whose IQ is higher than the hottest shade temperature ever recorded in the USA, in degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, by the way, how did you spend your 10,000th day?

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Summary: Terrible Title, Fun Book, Bad-boy Science in the USA!
Review: a refreshing alternative view of science and 'progress'. this book would complement Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' quite well, as it exemplifies in a scientist, some of the attitudes Sagan lamented taking hold in the mind of the general public. ... A 'suggestion for further research': follow up with a book on biochemistry of LSD and consciousness, interview Albert Hoffman and John Lilly maybe. As one of the 'Big Important Discoveries Swept Under the Carpet', it seems to me, is that 1 milligram of a substance can make a lifetime's worth of intellectual opinions, motivations, and ambitions suddenly 'irrelevant'. (pg 164) but, of course, what better reason for sweeping this under the carpet?

Rating:
Summary: No-brainers need not apply
Review: "KARY MULLIS is the new TIMOTHY LEARY of the 90's and beyond, A flashback of witty insight" DR.MULLIS strikes one up for hippie-counterculture proof to all that his mind is still working full tilt.No dead brain cells here!A true wizard who defys the scientific corporate world.Not a book for those with old-fashion rightwing values."JUST SAY KNOW"

Rating:
Summary: A Witty, Fun Book
Review: Any book that demonstrates well-informed candor is always a pleasure to read, particularly when popular beliefs are undermined. 'Dancing Naked' is just such a book. I found the material interesting, the writing intelligent and engaging... Dr. Mullis is a rare author to speak his mind without letting popular morality inhibit frank expression.

Rating:
Summary: Wow !
Review: Few books have had a more immediate impact on my thinking than 'Dancing Naked in the Mind Field'. One minute you love the author and his amazing insights...and the next you hate him because he shatters many of your illusions about science & the world around you. By the end of the book you are thinking in a whole new way....Quite amazing !

Rating:
Summary: I'd love to spend some time with him
Review: A great book. Mullis came up with the idea of PCR in a flash one night, and worked out the details to perfect it. What he gives us is snippets of his life that influenced him and gave him the skill, insight, and freedom of thought to come up with such an idea and make it work. It was a fun read with some worthwhile ideas that keep rattling around in my brain. Definitely not your average stuffed-shirt book about a Nobel Prize winner.

Rating:
Summary: What a Shmuck!
Review: I was buzzing along, fifty or so pages in, thinking, 'Not bad, a little cocky, but what the hell, he won the Nobel, give the guy some slack,' and then it happened. He went to work for O.J.'s defense team. Not only that--he and O.J. passed notes about chicks during the trial! There's nothing that pisses me off more than a brilliant man with no soul, so I tossed the book in the trash.