Review of Beloved by Toni Morrison

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 

Genre = Novel, History (Historical Fiction)

Book Club Event = Book List (08/15/2026)

Intriguing Connections = 1) Get To Know The Peoples Of The World (United States of America), 

2) The Persecuted and The Persecutors

Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“But her brain was not interested in the future.  Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to image, let alone plan for, the next day.  Exactly like that afternoon in the wild onions – when one more step was the most she could see of the future.  Other people went crazy, why couldn’t she?  Other people’s brain stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle.” – Toni Morrison, Chapter I, Page 84

 

“Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.  What did he want her pregnant for?  To hold on to her?  have a sign that he passed this way?  He probably had children everywhere anyway.  Eighteen years of roaming, he would have to have dropped a few.  No.  He resented the children she had, that’s what.  Child, she corrected herself.  Child plus Beloved whom she thought of as her own, and that is what he resented.  Sharing her with the girls.  Hearing the three of them laughing at something he wasn’t in on.  The code they used among themselves that he could not break.  Maybe even the time spent on their needs and not his.  They were a family somehow and he was not the head of it.” – Toni Morrison, Chapter I, Page 135

 

“Grandma Baby said people look down on her because she had eight children with different men.  Coloredpeople and whitepeople both look down on her for that.  Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them.  Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down.  She said for me not to listen to all that.  That I should always listen to my body and love it.” – Toni Morrison, Chapter II, Page 196

Review

Is This An Overview?                                          

Slavery tore families apart.  Belonging together as long as the partners are not sold to another.  Running away is not an effective measure, as there are people seeking to capture runaway slaves.  Staying anywhere too long will get one capture.  To prevent separation, to prevent someone from becoming a slave, difficult decisions are made.  Decisions that represent love to some, but cruelty to others.  Decisions which cause relatives of a runaway slave, to run away.  Physical freedom does little to overcome psychological imprisonment.  Haunted by a ghost of the decision made.  What decision defines the novel?

 

Caveats?

This book is difficult to read.  The context is antediluvian.  The writing style is effective at making the reader share the experience of the people in the era, but the style makes the book difficult to read.  

Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?

•What are some limitations of the book?

•To whom would you suggest this book?

•How does slavery affect family formation?

•What is psychological imprisonment?

•What happened at 124?

•Who is Sethe?

•What does Toni Morrison think of slave owners who think of their slaves as extended family members?

•Who was Baby Suggs?

•Who is Denver?

•What happened to Sethe’s children?

•Why not move to another place?

•Who is Paul D?

•Where slaves allowed to be happy?

•Who is Beloved? 

Book Details

Introduction Author:   Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Edition:                   First Vintage International Edition

Publisher:               Vintage Books [Penguin Random House]

Edition ISBN:         9780307388629

Pages to read:          237

Publication:             1987

1st Edition:              2025

Format:                    eBook 

Ratings out of 5:

Readability    1

Content          1

Overall          1

Review of 101 Theory Drive: A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memory by Terry McDermott

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 

Genre = Psychology

Intriguing Connections = 1) What Makes Science A Science?, 2) To Cooperate Or To Defect?, 3) Biographies: Auto, Memoir, and Other Types, 4) The Entrepreneurial Spirit, 

5) What Defines A Culture? How To Belong To A Community?

Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“Given the grim facts, a sense of tragedy looms as science has been able to do precious little to combat neural disorders.  One reason for this failure has been our meager understanding of the cognitive processes that are crippled in the course of the diseases.  This has not been for lack of effort.  Thousands of scientists have spent careers and billions of dollars seeking and largely failing to unearth these secrets.  Sadly, because science has not developed more thorough understandings of how the physical processes of learning and memory are supposed to work, there has been little that could be done to fix those processes when they break.” – Terry McDermott, Chapter One: The Talking Cure, Page 14

“Most of the time, when people attempt to define memory, they speak in metaphors, drawing analogies between memories and filing cabinets, or photographs, or videotape replays.  They might talk about what memories mean and what the loss of them portends.  They almost never talk about what memories actually are.  Why?  The simplest answer is they do not know.” – Terry McDermott, Chapter Two: Seeing, Page 17

“As counterintuitive as it seems, the idea that there would be an active forgetting mechanism right on the cusp of the mechanism that causes memory to occur makes sense.  No one remembers or would want to remember everything.  Walk down the block, go to the corner store, buy a cup of coffee, and go home.  What of that will you want to remember?  Likely very little.  There has to be a way to get rid of stuff.  Sharp waves – in essence, letting the mind wander – seemed a candidate to erase current experience from memory.” – Terry McDermott, Chapter Seven: Everything Falls Apart, Page 146

Review

Is This An Overview?

The science of the brain is complex.  A complexity that prevents an understanding of the cognitive process.  Without an understanding of the brain, there is little to treat neural disorders, or to improve memory and cognitive ability.  Due to the efforts made, discoveries about the brain have been made.  Discoveries such as that the brain is wired to constantly lose information.  That most of the brain uses the same basic circuitry, the same basic neurons.

 

This a book about the search to find the visual trace of memory, the physical changes in the brain when memory is made, an engram.  This is supposed to happen when memory is encoded, the method by which the brain changes shape, a process called long-term potentiation.  The scientists behind the science are competitive.  Competing for grant funds.  Competition that causes tensions to become dramatic, personal, which can at times override the process of science. 

 

Caveats?

This is an eclectic book, with a focus on memory.  This book is part biography, part basic science, part personalities involved in the science, part academic practice, part laboratory practice, part how discoveries are made, part how neurological products are made.  Some parts are for a general audience, but some parts contain technical information about neuroscience.  

Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?

•What are some limitations of the book?

•To whom would you suggest this book?

•What research is done in Lynch’s Lab?

•What is an engram?

•Is there a theory for neuroscience? 

•What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?

•What is available to ameliorate neural disorders?

•How does learning effect evolution?

•What inspired the development of the battery?

•What is known about the brain?

•What are the duties of the private investigator? 

•What is the source of most grant funds?

•Who is Lynch?  What is Lynch’s personality?

•Why is there difficulty in finding information about the brain?

•How is tenure earned?

•What was the consequence of the Cretaceous period? 

•How is the brain wired?

•What is Synaptics?

•How to improve mental performance?

•How are experiments performed? 

•What are clinical trials? 

•What is Cortex?

•What is peer review?

Book Details

Publisher:               Pantheon Books [Random House]

Edition ISBN:         9780375425387

Pages to read:          259

Publication:             2010

1st Edition:              2010

Format:                    Hardcover 

Ratings out of 5:

Readability    4

Content          4

Overall          4

Review of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 

Genre = Economics

Book Club Event = Book List (08/29/2026)

Intriguing Connections = 1) What Defines A Culture? How To Belong To A Community?, 

2) How To Allocate Resources?, 3) To Cooperate Or To Defect?, 4) Why Do People Think Differently?, 5) Why Conflict Occurs And How To Resolve Them?, 6) How Competitive Is Competition?, 

7) Learning Economics: Basic to Advanced, 8) Capitalism, Socialism, their Alternatives and Critiques, 9) War for Your Attention, 10) How To and Not To Run a Business, 11) The Impact of Inequality, 

12) How Is Sovereignty Is Gained And Lost?, 

Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is more difficult to describe.  It is not about inequality and fairness but about the corrosive tendency of markets.  Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them.  That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they also express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged.” – Michael Sandel, Introduction: Markets and Morals, Page 10

“The difference is this: A market economy is a tool – a valuable and effective tool – for organizing productive activity.  A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor.  It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.” – Michael Sandel, Introduction: Markets and Morals, Page 11

“The corruption argument, by contrast, focuses on the character of the goods themselves and the norms that should govern them.  So it cannot be met simply by establishing fair bargaining conditions.  Even in a society without unjust differences of power and wealth, there would still be things that money should not buy.  This is because markets are not mere mechanisms; they embody certain values.  And sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket norms worth caring about.” – Michael Sandel, Chapter 3: How Markets Crowd Out Morals, Page 85

Review

Is This An Overview?

Societies decide what can be put up for sale and what cannot be put on sale.  With the efficiency of markets, market methodology has been dominating culture.  Transitioning a market economy, into a market society.  Within a market economy, the market acts as an effective tool of organizing productive activity.  Within a market society, market values are inherent in everything that is done, with social relations determined by the market.  Markets do more than allocate resources, markets also change the product they regulate, markets change social norms.  There are consequences to transitioning society to become more like a market, by putting more on sale than before.  The consequences are inequality and corruption.

 

As more money is needed to function in a society, the more money matters in society.  When what can be purchased with money is political influence, better health care, education, and safety, the more inequality there will be.  Some assume that the most willing to pay are also the most able to pay.  But ability to pay might not be possible for those most willing to pay. 

 

Putting a price on anything changes its value, can corrupt the product or act.  A price can be a lower mode of valuation than is appropriate to the product or act.  Markets influence attitudes towards what is being exchanged.  Markets override nonmarket values.  Values which are beneficial to society.  Markets override intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation.  Markets can train people to only do certain activities when they are paid, which includes activities that would be helpful to themselves or others.  While people tend to be willing to accept certain tasks or decisions as part of civil service, for the public spirit.  People are often not willing to do the same tasks when paid to, as that would constitute bribery.

 

Caveats?

The book is based on examples.  Interest in the examples depends on the reader.  The systemic analysis on the consequences of the commercialization of everything, is spread throughout the book and can sometimes be repetitive.

Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?

•What are some limitations of the book?

•To whom would you suggest this book?

•What are the consequences of transitioning society to market norms?

•How do markets effect inequality?

•How do markets effect values? 

•What do markets do with nonmarket values?

•What is the different between a market economy and a market society?

•What is the difference between willingness to pay and ability to pay?

•What does society think of line jumping?

•What is the line-standing business?

•What are incentives?

•What is Project Prevention? 

•What effect did paying kids for academic activities have?

•How would the market effect refugees? 

•Can apologies be bought?

•Can friends be bought?

•How do gifts function?

•How do markets affect civic duty?

•How do markets affect public goods?

•What is the viatical industry?

•How does monetizing baseball effect the game? 

Book Details

Edition:                   First Edition

Publisher:               Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Edition ISBN:         9781429942584

Pages to read:          152

Publication:             2012

1st Edition:              2012

Format:                    eBook 

Ratings out of 5:

Readability    5

Content          4

Overall          5

Review of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 

Genre = Science

Book Club Event = Book List (08/08/2026)

Intriguing Connections = 1) The Evolution of Evolution, 2) How Competitive Is Competition?, 

3) How Does Data Get Use, And Misused?

Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“It seems clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to new conditions to cause any great amount of variation; and that, when the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues varying for many generations.  No case is on record of a variable organism ceasing to vary under cultivation.  Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still yield new varieties: our oldest domesticated animals are still capable of rapid improvement or modification.” – Charles Darwin, Chapter 1: Variation Under Domestication, Page 25

 

“Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life.  The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more improved in relation to its conditions.  This improvement inevitably leads to the gradual advancement of the organization of the greater number of living beings throughout the world.” – Charles Darwin, Chapter 4: Natural Selection; Or The Survival Of The Fittest, Page 158

“Natural selection can produce nothing in one species for the exclusive good or injury of another; though it may well produce parts, organs, and excretions highly useful or even indispensable, or highly injurious to another species, but in all cases at the same time useful to the possessor.  In each well-stocked country natural selection acts through the competition of the inhabitants and consequently leads to success in the battle for life, only in accordance with the standard of that particular country.” – Charles Darwin, Chapter 6: Difficulties Of The Theory, Page 260

Review

Is This An Overview?

Over successive generations, flora and fauna biologically adept to better fit their local conditions.  Improving their ability to survive.  In the competition for scarce resources, those fittest to survive spread to become more numerous.  But due to limits in resources, there are limits to how numerous any species can become.  Larger regions have more biodiversity with increased competition that causes the species to improve further. 

 

Caveats?

This is a difficult book to read due to antediluvian references.  This book is about the data, the evidence, the flora and fauna that explain evolution.  The community effort involved in the validation of the idea of natural selection.  Although a foundational book, improvements have been made since publication to the science, explanations, and descriptions. 

Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?

•What are some limitations of the book?

•To whom would you suggest this book?

•What are the different views by naturalists of species?

•Why are there diverse species?

•Why is there species modification?

•What is the effect of competition for resources?

•What are species improvements?

•What are habits?

•What is the evidence of evolution?

•What are variations under domestication?

•What is natural selection?

•What happens to hybrids?

•What is the effect of geography?

Book Details

Edition:                  6th Edition

Publisher:               Bygone Books

Edition ISBN:         NA

Pages to read:          586

Publication:             2026

1st Edition:              1872

Format:                    eBook 

Ratings out of 5:

Readability    1

Content          2

Overall          1

Review of Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 

Genre = Sociology

Book Club Event = Book List (09/05/2026)

Intriguing Connections = 1) Get To Know The Peoples Of The World (Germany), 

2) What Defines A Culture? How To Belong To A Community?, 3) The Persecuted and The Persecutors, 4) How Is Sovereignty Is Gained And Lost?, 5) Capitalism, Socialism, their Alternatives and Critique, 

6) To Cooperate Or To Defect?, 7) Why Conflict Occurs And How To Resolve Them?, 

Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“For the outsiders of the Empire as, later, for the insiders of the Republic, the most insistent questions revolved around the need for man’s renewal, questions made most urgent and practically insoluble by the disappearance of God, the threat of the machine, the incurable stupidity of the upper classes, and the helpless philistinism of the bourgeoisie.  Seeking answers to their questions, the rebels turned to whatever help they could find, wherever they could find it.  There was nothing unusual in this; man’s articulate misery or articulate delight has never been a respecter of frontiers.” – Peter Gay, Chapter 1: The Trauma of Birth, Page 26

“Historians have made much of the failures of the politicians who governed the young Republic.  Had they failed utterly, it would have been understandable; Ebert and his associates faced difficulties that would have daunted the coolest and most experienced statesman.  There was endemic disorder, there was desperate hunger, there was demoralization among intellectuals, there was an army to be brough home and demobilized, there were bitter wounds to be healed and no time to heal them, there was a constitution to be written and put into practice.” – Peter Gay, Chapter 1: The Trauma of Birth, Page 32

“The Emperor and his partisans were discredited; leadership would have to come from Socialists.  But what kind of Socialists?  The Social Democratic party had long been a major party, but even before 1914 it had been a tense coalition, divided among radicals who took revolutionary Marxism seriously, trade unionists who wanted to forget about ideology and seek higher standards of living for the working classes, and functionaries who compromised by talking like revolutionaries and acting like parliamentarians.” – Peter Gay, Appendices, Page 169

Review

Is This An Overview?

The Weimar Republic was born after the end of the German Empire.  The Republic ended when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, known as the Nazi’s, took power.  The Republic had a short life-span, but developed influential ideas that shaped the world.  The Republic struggled through a myriad of conflicts, political rifts, economic crises, cultural changes, and political assassinations.

 

The end of empire saw the rise of socialism.  Various socialist political organizations were competing for power.  Some wanted Germany to become part of the Soviet Union, some wanted a military dictatorship, some wanted a parliamentary democracy.  The rise of the Republic enabled the ability to express oneself.  Due to prior repressions, people were initially unsure of how to conduct themselves, hesitant to share their views.  Intellectuals had a tacit agreement with the state, to limit criticism, for private freedoms. 

 

As the culture of repression subsided, the creative diversity had shown itself through inflammatory statements, and outrageous exhibits.  The Republic brought back cultural engagement with the international community.  When the Republic became more stable, there was backlash, against thinking.  Evidence of the Republic’s success in cultural creativity, is shown by the number of influential exiles who fled the Nazi regime.  

 

Caveats?

This book can be difficult to read.  Various ideas have become influential, but references to specifics details can be better understood by those who already have some background information.  

Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?

•What are some limitations of the book?

•To whom would you suggest this book?

•What was the Weimar Republic?

•What were the political divides of the Republic?

•What were the economic problems of the Republic?

•What happened to the culture? 

•What were the different types of socialist organizations? 

•How loyal were people during the Republic?

•What was the war psychosis? 

•What did Germans think of the Peace of Versailles?

•What is psychoanalysis? 

•What was Bismarck’s Second Reich educational program?

•How did intellectuals respond to freedoms of expression?

•How did architects define Germany?

•How did the global Depression affect Germany?

Book Details

Publisher:               W. W. Norton & Company

Edition ISBN:         9780393069594

Pages to read:          178

Publication:             2001

1st Edition:              1968

Format:                    eBook 

Ratings out of 5:

Readability    3

Content          3

Overall          3