Proust and the Squid : the story and science of the reading brain

Wolf connects neuroscience, archaeology, history, and linguistics to review how reading developed and how it interacts with cognition. I particularly liked the sections comparing different languages, with the case of the Mandarin/English bilingual person who had a stroke and then could still read English but not Mandarin standing out as a fascinating example.

That being said, Wolf makes some extremely unfounded assertions about digital technologies, making some of the same mistakes that she chides earlier historical figures as making. There are other huge missteps in this book, such as asserting that human biology adapted for reading - which is pretty insane given how little of the population could read until ~100 years ago.

3.5. I agree with some of the other reviews of this book that it fails at being either nonfiction for general readers or an academic text, fitting into neither box. But I still appreciated it. As an English teacher, it was helpful to learn about the development of reading and its related neuroscience. I learned some things about dyslexia and how reading shapes our brains. Yes, it was a bit repetitive and vague in some areas but has some good information.