The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity - Hardcover

Klein, Stefan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160094017X ISBN 13: 9781600940170

Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2007

Synopsis

Have you ever fantasized about having more time-now, this minute, to accomplish everything you need and want to get done today? Or wondered why time flies when you are thoroughly engrossed in something? Or why minutes pass so slowly when you're standing in line at the store or airport, or on hold waiting for a customer service rep to answer your call? Or how, simply, to find more time to relax and unwind? Now, with The Secret Pulse of Time, already a longstanding best seller in Germany, internationally best-selling and award-winning science writer Stefan Klein has crafted what amounts to "operating instructions" for time. "We are all taking part in a giant experiment in dealing with time," Klein writes-and his aim with this book is to help us each to understand "the degree to which our experience of time hinges on our outlook on life."

With his journalist's unerring eye for the telling detail, Stefan Klein effortlessly combines original investigation and reportage, personal revelation, and a wide-ranging, commanding presentation of scientific research among disciplines including brain physiology, social psychology, philosophy, and Einsteinian physics-with the goal of guiding us not only to better master time but also to understand why we so often fail to do so. Woven into his narrative are dozens of practical ways to make sense of and gain control over time, including: How not to lose your head when a deadline is quickly approaching How the present becomes a memory-and vice versa How to attune to your inner clock for more productive, satisfying days How to avoid becoming worn out by the fast tempo of modern life Popular science at its very best, The Secret Pulse of Time awakens us to and empowers us with the idea that time is far more at our disposal than we have ever before realized.

About this title

About the Author

Stefan Klein is an award-winning European science writer and author of the international bestsellers The Science of Happiness and The Secret Pulse of Time. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Reviews

Starred Review. A witty, engrossing journey through the science, culture, concept and nature of time, the latest from German science journalist Klein (The Science of Happiness) is a treatise on temporality brimming with insight. Exploring the extensive research on time perception-from Michel Siffre subjecting himself to months alone in a pitch-dark cave to the burrowing behavior of single-celled euglena-Klein amasses hard evidence, amusing anecdotes and unlikely consequences of the enormous disparity between time as we perceive it (inner time) and time as we conceptualize it (i.e, clock time). For example, an investigation into the slippery idea of "the present" indicates that "The Now is an Illusion," synthesized by the mind from disparate, often non-simultaneous sensory elements: "The brain can delay the present by up to a half-second" in order to compensate for the relative speed of, say, sound over sight. Klein's suggestions for slowing down arise seamlessly throughout the book from the biological and physical data (well documented in chapter notes and a thorough bibliography), and the epilogue pares them down to six individual steps. Sure to give readers fresh perspective on their everyday lives, Klein's concepts are well illustrated in copious examples from literature and popular culture, and Frisch's fluid, flawless translation makes his text as captivating as it is enlightening.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160094017X
• ISBN 13: 9781600940170
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368