Massimo Curatella

Tag: reviews

  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Book review

    Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Book review

    The best book on humanity I’ve read so far: this book makes me feel bad.

    It makes me feel bad because it makes me realize the amount of violence, ignorance, and stupidity which lead most of the humankind’s action.

    It makes me feel bad because I’ve always hated history in school and this is the book I would have like to read.

    It makes me feel bad because on several occasions the author makes such clear, logical, straightforward conclusions on some of the most powerful events of history where I would have thought even having the slightest understanding of the causes would have been out of reach.

    It makes me feel bad because it’s long and full of stories, anecdotes, and considerations which you don’t want to have enough and, at the same time, frequently, makes me want to cry and run in horror.

    It makes me feel bad because it helped me to find new, powerful questions: not “Who am I” and not even the better “Who do I want to become?” but the scary “What do I want to want?”

  • Learning How to Learn, Book Review

    Learning How to Learn, Book Review

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    Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens by Barbara Oakley, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Alistair McConville. On Goodreads.

    (This review appeared originally on Goodreads.)

    Learning How To Learn talks about simple and effective practices to improve your ability to learn more efficiently and more effectively.

    Dr. Barbara Oakley, among the many other books authored, is the creator of the most popular MOOC with the similar name “Learning How To Learn,” which I immensely enjoyed and included many of the thinking tools presented in this book.

    I enjoyed being an early reader of this book’s draft as a reviewer, and I was eager to buy the final book when released. Exchanging directly with the author has been a further occasion to learn more and better about the tools and practices.

    Although it is aimed at kids, I tested most of the techniques in the first person: any learner of any age can benefit from them. The approaches proposed by the authors are coming from their field of research in neurosciences and their teaching practices. I was delighted by the effectiveness of some techniques because they are addressing many of my weak spots: memorizing, avoiding distractions, getting the best out of learning materials. Knowing more about the inner workings of our brains helps in understanding why specific learning and organizing techniques are working better than others and why we should take care of aspects and things that might seem unrelated at first.

    For instance, the book explains the importance of reading and summarizing with your own words, taking care of a good dose of sleep, the effect of the environment (the place, the light, the sounds), the immense attention-destruction power of distractions, and how to prevent it.

    I love this book, and I am including many of its suggestions in my teaching, facilitation, and training practices: I am also doing my best to improve the learning capability of my son by suggesting the application of Learning “How To Learn”’s gems.

    Strongly recommended to any human being.