Summer 1995 Volume 4, Number 3

CONVERSATIONS ON MIND, MATTER AND MATHEMATICS
by Jean-Pierre Changeux and Alain Connes; edited and translated by M.B. Debevoise (Princeton University Press, NJ 1995. Illustrated; 260 pp., $ 24.95) In lively, unpretentious debates, two distinguished scientists, a mathemetician (Connes) and a neuroscientist (Changeux), traverse such ground as the nature of mathematics, the characteristics of abstract thought, the possibility of thinking machines, the mathematical structure of nature and the universality of morality. Discussing machine intelligence, they explore types of abstract thinking and the proposal that such psychological processes involve a kind of selection among neuronal systems.

AN UNQUIET MIND
by Kay Redfield Jamison (Knopf, NY, 1995. 224 pp., $22). In 1990, Dr. Jamison co-authored with Frederick K.Goodwin, the former National Institute of Mental Health director, the definitive professional book on manic-depressive illness (MDI). She followed with Touched with Fire, an exploration of creativity and MDI. Now, in a memoir described by New York Times columnist William Safire as "the most emotionally moving book I've ever read about the emotions" and by Time magazine as a "rare and insightful view of mental illness," she discloses her own lifetime struggle with the illness.

GROWING OLDER AND WISER:
Coping with Expectations, Challenges and Change in the Later Years
by Nathan Billig, M.D. (Lexington Books, NY, 1995. 220 pp., $11). The author, director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Program at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. focuses on normal aging. He draws on case histories of patients living satisfying lives beyond their 70s to knock down stereotypes and highlight aging's positive aspects, as well as typical problems such as depression and sleep and sexual difficulties.