The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.

This book presents the human hand from an overall perspective – from the first appearance of hand-like structures in the fins of big fishes living millions of years ago to today ́s and the future’s mind-controlled artificial hands. Much focus is given to the extremely well-developed sensation of the hand, its importance and its linkage to brain plasticity mechanisms. How can active hands rapidly expand their representational area in the brain? How can the sense of touch substitute for other deficient senses, such as in Braille reading where hand sensation substitutes for missing vision? How can the mere observation of active hands, belonging to others, activate the hand area in the observer’s own brain and what is the importance of this phenomenon for learning by imitation and the understanding of other peoples’ actions, gestures and body language? Why are some of us left-handed and what are the consequences from cultural and physiological viewpoints? Why does phantom sensation and phantom pain occur after hand amputation, and what can we do about it? Why can salamanders regenerate new extremities while humans can not? Is it possible to transplant a hand from a diseased individual to an amputee? Can artificial robotic hands be controlled by our mind, and can they ever gain the role of a normal hand? What role did the hand and the brain play during evolution in tool construction and development of language and cognitive functions? The hand has a high symbolic value in religion, literature and art and our hands have a key role in gestures and body language. The Hand and the Brain is aimed at anybody with interest in life sciences, in the medical field especially hand surgeons, orthopaedic specialists, neurologists and general practitioners, and those working in rehabilitation medicine and pain treatment. The original Swedish version of The Hand and the Brain has also become very popular among physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and among a general population with an interest in science.

"A startling argument . . . provocative . . . absorbing." --The Boston Globe "Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species." --The New York Times Book Review The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth. In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets. "A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." --The Washington Post

This second and revised edition contains a detailed introduction to the key classes of intelligent data analysis methods. The twelve coherently written chapters by leading experts provide complete coverage of the core issues. The first half of the book is devoted to the discussion of classical statistical issues. The following chapters concentrate on machine learning and artificial intelligence, rule induction methods, neural networks, fuzzy logic, and stochastic search methods. The book concludes with a chapter on visualization and an advanced overview of IDA processes.

Theoretical and empirical accounts of the interconnectedness between the manual and the mental suggest that the hand can be understood as a cognitive instrument. Cartesian-inspired dualism enforces a theoretical distinction between the motor and the cognitive and locates the mental exclusively in the head. This collection, focusing on the hand, challenges this dichotomy, offering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the interconnectedness and interdependence of the manual and mental. The contributors explore the possibility that the hand, far from being the merely mechanical executor of preconceived mental plans, possesses its own know-how, enabling "enhanded" beings to navigate the natural, social, and cultural world without engaging propositional thought, consciousness, and deliberation. The contributors consider not only broad philosophical questions—ranging from the nature of embodiment, enaction, and the extended mind to the phenomenology of agency—but also such specific issues as touching, grasping, gesturing, sociality, and simulation. They show that the capacities of the hand include perception (on its own and in association with other modalities), action, (extended) cognition, social interaction, and communication. Taken together, their accounts offer a handbook of cutting-edge research exploring the ways that the manual shapes and reshapes the mental and creates conditions for embodied agents to act in the world. Contributors Matteo Baccarini, Andrew J. Bremner, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Andy Clark, Jonathan Cole, Dorothy Cowie, Natalie Depraz, Rosalyn Driscoll, Harry Farmer, Shaun Gallagher, Nicholas P. Holmes, Daniel D. Hutto, Angelo Maravita, Filip Mattens, Richard Menary, Jesse J. Prinz, Zdravko Radman, Matthew Ratcliffe, Etiennne B. Roesch, Stephen V. Shepherd, Susan A.J. Stuart, Manos Tsakiris, Michael Wheeler

In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills. In The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa reveals the miraculous potential of the human hand. He shows how the pencil in the hand of the artist or architect becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image. The book surveys the multiple essences of the hand, its biological evolution and its role in the shaping of culture, highlighting how the hand–tool union and eye–hand–mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work. Pallasmaa here continues the exploration begun in his classic work The Eyes of the Skin by further investigating the interplay of emotion and imagination, intelligence and making, theory and life, once again redefining the task of art and architecture through well-grounded human truths.