Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr by Margaret Porter

Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr. Margaret Porter. Gallica Press. October 2018. 378 pp. ISBN#:  9780990742036.

“I enjoy drawing up plans and designing and making things…They don’t realize that Hedy Lamarr is an invention.”  Yes, Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful actress but also an intelligent woman who invented a war weapon that was almost used to defeat the Germans in WWII. 

Born Hedy Kiesler, an Austrian, Jewish woman, she aspired to be a wonderful actress, but the films she chose to act in first was Ecstasy.  Hedy appears naked and fakes an orgasm which equally gained her universal praise and scorn in the earlier years of the 20^th Century.

She marries a German munitions dealer who soon becomes her jailor.  She winds up escaping from him after realizing she couldn’t ignore her yearning to become a full-time actress.  Hedy signed a contract with Louis Mayer after much haggling but seems frustrated by not being given films she feels are equal to her acting abilities.  Still, her looks and talents catapult her to fame and stardom status!  Her love life is certainly interesting if not very stable. 

Margaret Porter gives a deft depiction of the lives of actors and actresses who more frequently “use” each other for better scripts or positions in the middle of a turbulent time of history with the rise of Adolph Hitler and the beginning of WWII.  Hedy moves through six marriages and has several children, including one adopted son.  She is also an avid gardener and inventor.  She generously contributes her time for the war by selling bonds and attending clubs to sign autographs and dance with soldiers and sailors on leave.  

She researches science facts to create the torpedo that can attack without being detected.  The work behind this creation is no small feat and highly complex.  Hedy herself is a complex character, always searching for deeper meaning and creation, never satisfied.   Her private and public life parallel the historical and political turmoil of Europe and America – dramatic and life-changing!

Enjoy the scenes where Hedy stuns observers with her appearances in elegant gowns and hats, once an actress, always an actress!  Yet also relish the brilliance of her thinking as she seeks solitude to do research and create a soda machine and later a war weapon to be used against Germany.  Most of all, just revel in the enigmatic and intelligent talent of one of the most famous actresses in the Gilded Age of American Theater!  Highly recommended!

The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius by Zach Schonbrun

The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius by Zach Schonbrun. Penguin Publishing Group. Copyright April 2018.; hb., 352 pp.; ISBN: 978110986332.

Many years ago, I recall reading an article about how Tiger Woods learned to golf so well by the scientific methods taught to him by his father.  Curious, I never pursued that interesting fact, but it came to mind again with this book about the brain and athletic performance.  The brain can be trained for athletic performance up to a certain age, exemplified by the author’s reference to Michael Jordan who had an interest in baseball but couldn’t grow in the required skills and yet had what was needed for baseball. 

Dagmar Sternad has an Action Lab at Northeastern University.  Here she experimented with the game skittles, demonstrating how timing from the brain and physiology conspires to make us winners or losers and how movement or kinetic patterns and features could be retained for up to eight years.  There is also an interesting discussion of skills that are learned and involve brain activity but can not develop further because of “habit” that negates any further learning curve from progressing. This involves “action controllers, “automatization” or even “muscle memory” as an action or sequence of actions that get formed, reorganized and consolidated in our long-term memory.  And so it goes.

These are a few of the examples and explanations that tell the story of athletic and normal action in an understandable presentation, such as the reflex arc, the feed-forward loop of sensory-to-motor connections that trigger everyday actions or the position of neural swing decisions in baseball, tennis and volleyball serves.

The factor of intention is also discussed as in using a scalpel to operate or to murder.  The same applies about these motor skills applied to kinematics or movement.  All in all, “stimulus-response connections build up a nervous system of sets which function like cognitive maps.” 

The authors even describe how “virtual arms” learn to operate or are taught by science to understand the training behind using these prostheses.

Anyone interested in physical activity, sports, coaching etc. will find this book fascinating and interesting for practice or just understanding the theories and applications that apply when playing or watching sports.  Highly recommended and engaging science in a credible, readable book.  Nicely done, Zach Schonbrun!

Touch: The Science of Hand, heart and Mind by David J. Linden

Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind. David J. Linden.  Viking Adult.  January 2015. 272 pp. Hardback and e-book. ISBN #: 978067001487.

Touch quite clearly is associated with almost every experience of a human being.  This book begins by correlating the times a person says “I feel” followed by an emotional adjective to indicate that the tactile sense is wired neurologically to not only our brain but also our emotions.  The author then explores the difference between what an affectionate or friendly touch can mean to an encounter and how the recipient of such a touch interprets the future of such a relationship, whether it be in business, education, or elsewhere.

The author then moves into a series of complex experiments that have to do with tactile sense of different experiences, even moving into the field of DNA related to touch, how pain receptors operate to connect with the emotions, and an actual sharing of the connection with the euphorically experienced orgasm which is obviously related to touch.  In all of this, however, it is even more phenomenal how few individuals actually realize that most of their experiences are related to the tactile sense.  When asked if a person had to lose one sense, which one would the individual choose, none even referred to touch in their processing the question!

There is much more in this text which deserves attention.  Each situation is presented with scientifically based testing and validation. It offers the reader time to consider the implications of a handshake, a warm hug, a touch on the shoulder, patting the back or hand of a child, offering someone a warm drink, and many other examples of making a new awareness of touch a tool for better communication and relationships with other human beings in need of this tactile experience. The book is highly readable and laced with stories that are fascinating, funny and surprising! Very nicely done, David J. Linden!