Author with local ties writes ‘precocious and engaging’ book
Jonah Lehrer is a Rhodes scholar and author whose book “Proust Was a Neuroscientist” gained the attention of New York Times reviewers. And he has links to York County. Background post detailing other national literary and arts figures with York ties: A & E greats.
Jonah Lehrer’s new book, “Proust Was a Neuroscientist,” was recently reviewed in the New York Times.
Its another case of an achiever with York County links making it big on the national scene.
The 25-year-old is the son of York County native Jean Hively, a 1970 graduate of Red Lion Area Senior High School. Today, she lives with her family in Los Angeles but has relatives in York County.
To give a taste of the book, The New York Times review begins:
Jonah Lehrer strikes me as one of those young people who turn up in articles on how life is now so competitive that children no longer have time for jump-rope or adolescents for baby-sitting. At 25, he has already been a Rhodes scholar, worked in the lab of a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist and been a line chef in the kitchens of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin. He writes a blog on science issues affiliated with Seed magazine, where he is an editor, and now has written “Proust Was a Neuroscientist,” a precocious and engaging book that tries to mend the century-old tear between the literary and scientific cultures.
To view the whole review, see: Swann’s Hypothesis.
It can be ordered via amazon.com.
One of several reviews there states:
Don’t buy this book if you’re looking for some new definitive something or other regarding Proust. Marcel gets only one chapter, but what a fine chapter that is.
Buy it if you love fine writing, fine painting, haute cuisine and magnificent neuroscience.
Buy it if you have any pretensions towards being civilized.
I owe nothing to the author, who has never heard of me, and I work not in any nearby intellectual field.
I write as one who saw, who bought and who is much enjoying.
