Capsule Reviews

By Bob Grant Capsule Reviews Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality by Hannah Holmes Random House (To be published February 22, 2011) Fast becoming adept at probing the science behind being human, science writer Hannah Holmes, author of 2009’s The Well-Dressed Ape, is at it again with Quirk. This time around Holmes dissects human personality into five distinct components: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousne

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Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality
by Hannah Holmes
Random House (To be published February 22, 2011)

Fast becoming adept at probing the science behind being human, science writer Hannah Holmes, author of 2009’s The Well-Dressed Ape, is at it again with Quirk. This time around Holmes dissects human personality into five distinct components: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. She calls them “dials…each set to different temperatures,” and proceeds to slice each component further into separate facets (for example, neuroticism breaks down into anxiety and depression, extraversion into impulsiveness, activeness, cheerfulness, and assertiveness, and so on).

Holmes covers the evolution of each of these facets and takes the reader on a tour of world-class laboratories studying some of these qualities in mice, always with an eye toward tying it back into understanding the peculiarities of human personality.

The reader can even take brief personality tests at ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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