Leonard Shlain

Forging provocative connections among many fields, the author of Art and Physics demonstrates how alphabetic literacy caused the development of the brain's left half over the right, which affected the role and power of women. Reprint. Tour.

The Conflict Between Word and Image

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Rjyan C Kidwell

So this is a real riveting read, but if you're a strict materialist/positivist type person, you're gonna get annoyed. And if you're not, you're going to have different issues, but possibly also more dexterity agility for separating the underlying concept here from its specific execution here when necessary. Dude is a surgeon and, despite hints of some familiarity and/or sympathy with esoteric traditions, is trying very hard to make this a much more Conventionally Scientific argument than it could ever really be. As the book goes on, he slips more and more into the muddling of Feminine/Masculine as descriptions of What Women/Men Do, as opposed to transcendent archetypes, which makes certain passages seem much more dated than they could've, imo. 

So if you are hung up on Certainty and want to be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that sharp spikes in alphabet literacy inevitably cause widespread left-brain hypertrophy resulting in iconoclasm & violent misogyny, go ahead and read this for the pleasure of bellyaching after. But I also recommend this book if you are capable of gleaning insight and/or enjoyment from a provocative hypothesis that is imaginatively manipulated until it encompasses all of human history (and then some).

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess The Conflict Between Word and Image

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