David Wolman's new book, A Left Hand Turn
Around the World, explores the scientific factors
that lead to 10 percent of the human race being
left-handed. Wolman tells Madeleine Brand about
the book.
"Why are so many humans
right-handed when most animal species show random
preferences for one side or another? Is a
preference for the left hand an indicator of brain
difference? How do developing embryos figure out
which side is left, anyway, and why is that
information so critical to their development?
Wolman's breezy, informative account of "what
makes left-handers special" tackles these and
other fascinating questions on its journey to
finding out what exactly handedness means and why
it happens. The author, a proud member of "the
fraternity of Southpaw" and a journalist whose
work has appeared in New Scientist, Discover and
Wired, travels all over the world to find his
answers, and his lively tales of visits to the
field's top researchers double as solid
introductions to the science of handedness... his
attempts at left-handed golf in Japan and
left-handed sword fighting in Scotland are funny
and instructive. Amusing and thorough, this little
tome makes a good gift for the left-handers on the
Christmas list."
Wolman's at his
accessible and witty best discussing the science
of handedness and left-brain vs. right-brain
tendencies. Parts of the book, like his visit to
a....
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"Science journalist Wolman
offers a spirited defense of left-handedness,
which he takes to be one more sign of the wondrous
diversity of nature. Sinister, gauche, leftist:
What’s a self-respecting southpaw to do in the
face of so much semantic freight, and the world’s
misunderstanding generally? Well, writes Wolman,
it’s not necessarily true that all southpaws are
born curve-ball pitchers, but the 10–12 percent of
humans who are left-handed are interestingly
different—“not starkly different…but not trivial
in their differences either”—from their
right-handed peers. The left and right sides of
the human brain are separate, bridged by the
corpus callosum, which passes information between
the two halves. Yet, early science to the
contrary, right-handers don’t do all their
thinking on the left side and lefties on the
right; there’s a lot more to it than that, even if
Wolman favors a gods-for-clods approach, for
beyond the two facts that the brain halves are
distinct and joined by the corpus callosum, he
writes, “there’s no need to be weighed down with
more brainy lingo.” Aspiring brain surgeons need
not fear, however: Even though written at a
lay-accessible level, Wolman’s narrative is
robust, treating all kinds of conjectures as to
what causes the distinction between right and
left—likely, in the end, some little evolutionary
jog that permits lots of asymmetry in a species
that prizes the adaptive advantages of symmetry,
such as having two legs and two eyes that are more
or less equal. Happily for lefties, who are “cool
because they allow you to un-confound two
hypotheses,” there’s no evidence that handedness
relates to intelligence or ability, or that
lefties are bewitched or weird or doomed, or that
all those other prejudices of yore have any
foundation. A nicely balanced blend of pop science
and personal essay, and just the thing for the
family
southpaw."
For the 10 to 12
percent of the world's population who use their
left hands, life is often a series of challenges.
From learning cursive writing, to using scissors,
to determining where to sit at the dinner table,
many lefties have a hard time in a right-dominated
world. Journalist Wolman, himself a left-hander,
explores the myths and stories surrounding
southpaws (a term originally used to describe
left-handed baseball pitchers), including their
alleged alliance with Satan. He also takes a close
look at the research into handedness and its
implications for brain organization. Wolman
interviews some scientists who propose a link
between language development and hand preference
and others whose research on chimps suggest a
fundamental role for handedness in human
evolution. Wolman includes first-person anecdotes
of encounters with lefthanders, from lefty golfers
in Japan to a double amputee who nevertheless
maintains his left-handedness. Wolman's book
offers an informative and often humorous look at
southpaws.
Steven
Poole
Saturday March 4,
2006
There
I was all this time thinking I was a cuddy-wifter,
owing to my torturous writing posture and sinister
use of chopsticks, when I filled in the Edinburgh
Handedness Inventory kindly supplied by this book.
With a score of 5/10, I am not left-handed at all
but "mixed-handed"....
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Click HERE to listen to the
interview.
New
Hampshire Public Radio
From Left Hand, West Virginia to Colorado's
Left Hand Brewery and Japan's National Association
of Left-Handed Golfers, author David Wolman spent
a year traveling the world in order to explore
what separates Lefties from their right-handed
counterparts and get a better understanding of
this quirky ten percent of the population known as
Southpaw Nation. Laura's guest is David Wolman,
Author and Journalist whose work has appeared in
everything from Discover and Newsweek to Forbes
and Wired.
Click HERE to listen to the
interview
Click HERE to listen to Powells
bookcast of author.
David
Wolman, author, A Left-Hand Turn
Around The World (Da Capo, 2006)
-on the
complicated history of left-handedness. Click HERE to listen to the interview.
LISTEN
Here
is a burning question for the scientifically
curious. Why is the overwhelming majority of the
human population right-handed? Or, as southpaw
author David Wolman might prefer to put it, what
makes left-handed people
special?
Wolman's wide-ranging exploration of that
question in "A Left-Hand Turn Around the World:
Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things
Southpaw" particularly intrigues me because --
full disclosure -- I was born left-handed but fell
prey to a first-grade teacher who tried with
moderate success to convert me to the world of
righties.
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Instead of hiding
his left hand under a bushel or trying to become
ambidextrous, Wolman is proud of his
left-handedness. When he sees a stranger writing
with his left hand, he's apt to say something like
"southpaw -- nice" or "lefties -- gotta love 'em."
He enjoys the feeling of superiority many
left-handers cherish, a sense that being among
the...
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 Winston-Salem
Journal
If you have a lefty in your family, here's the
perfect gift for the next occasion. David Wolman
is a left-handed journalist on a quest for
southpaw wisdom. His well researched but
lighthearted look at lefties will reward
left-handers for their unique gifts and
perspectives....
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"Journalist and
'strong lefty' Wolman takes readers on an
idiosyncratic world tour in pursuit of an
understanding--and celebration--of
left-handedness. His travels take him to the
Dupuytren Museum in Paris to visit its morbid
anatomy collection and view brains studied by
19th-centrury surgeon Paul Broca, who first
discerned the asymmetry of the brain. He visits
the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta,
meets a double amputee in Illinois whose left hand
was successfully reconnected to his right arm, and
plays a tournament (in entertainingly bad fashion)
with the National Association of Left-Handed
Golfers in Japan. Wolman participates in a
handwriting analysis class in Virginia and a
palmistry course in Quebec, though he finds both
pursuits intellectually dishonest. He is far more
enthusiastic about the research of the
geneticists, psychologists, and other scientists
whom he visits during his quest for the cause and
meaning of left-handedness... an entertaining
exploration and intriguing look into new research
and ongoing debate."
"Wolman, a proud Southpaw
and lover of all things left, decided to delve
into the science and culture of left handedness,
hoping to discover if there is any to significance
of 10-12% of the population’s natural preference
for the left hand. What Wolman finds are a lot of
theories but few concrete answers. One scientist
thinks a phenomenon dubbed as ‘Right Shift’ is
responsible for the language and right-handed
dominance that set humans apart from other
mammals. Or do they? Another scientist believes
chimps exhibit a similar preference for the right
hand. Yet another posits that the divide is more
along the lines of single handedness vs. mixed
handedness. Along the way, Wolman meets some
colorful characters, including a handwriting guru
and a man who had his left hand attached to his
right arm after an accident. For those with a keen
interest in the subject, Wolman debunks many of
the myths associated with handedness and provides
a lively account for those interested in the
significance of being a lefty or a
righty."
“ Left-handers have been
getting bad press ever since biblical times, but
southpaw David Wolman isn't disheartened. His
lighthearted Left-Hand Turn Around the World
explores every imaginable aspect of this
distinctive anomaly. With an apparently insatiable
curiosity about all things left, Wolman consults
neuroscientists, psychologists, primatologists,
handwriting analysts, occultists, and even members
of Japan 's National Association of Left-Handed
Golfers. You needn'y be a lefty to enjoy this
fact-filled, entertaining, and insightful book.”
Far more detailed than a
typical collection of left-handed trivia, David
Wolman's Left-Hand Turn Around
The World examines 200 years of anatomy in a
search for the roots of hand preference. The
results are surprising, and perhaps a bit
disappointing to anyone who prefers believing
"left-handed people are the only ones in their
right minds."
Wolman
travels the world for answers, from a mildly
gruesome visit to Broca's bottled brains in a
Paris
museum to the
latest
Berkeley
research
labs. Throughout the journey, the science is as
accessible as any animal documentary and as
well-documented as any rigorous reader will
demand. Included in the mix are a trip to a
graphologist's convention and a visit with a
gentleman whose handedness is the result of
surgically combining his left hand with his right
arm. Wolman's Fulbright fellowship-winning
reporting is always clear and entertaining—he has
a fine knack for presenting complex theories in
direct, dryly amusing language. He frequently
inserts himself into the research, in one case
borrowing his nephew for a visit with a pediatric
neuropsychologist.
With
the most recent research offering the theory that
strength of hand preference is more important than
the actual hand preferred, the final conclusion
could be an eye opener to those who prefer the old
ideas that lefties are more creative, athletic,
artistic and generally more wonderful. As Wolman
says in conclusion, you can still says lefties are
special, because they are.
Jill Lightner
While "A Left-Hand
Turn" is chalk full of amusing anecdotes about
Wolman's history of awkward seating arrangements,
the euphoria of confusing tennis opponents with
his backhand and forehand, and his endearing
affinity to other lefties - which he says amounts
to 10 to 12 percent of the population - the book
also has a...
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Much of society has a longstanding, deeply
ingrained preference for the right-handed and bias
against the left-handed. Consider the Latin
words: dexter means “right,” and gives us the
positive connotations of the word “dexterous”;
“sinister” means “left,” and there is nothing
positive about the meaning of the modern word
“sinister.” Yet there are also persistent
rumors that the left-handed are more ...
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Funny,
inspired and illuminating…
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