The Master and His Emissary

Iain McGilchrist's 2009 argument that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have fundamentally different 'worldviews' — left hemisphere grasps and manipulates details; right hemisphere perceives wholes and context — and that Western civilization has dangerously over-privileged left-hemisphere thinking.

Creates the most ambitious argument that left-hemisphere dominance explains the pathologies of Western modernity — McGilchrist's synthesis of neuroscience, philosophy, art, and history provides a speculative but intellectually serious account of why modern culture feels simultaneously technically sophisticated and spiritually impoverished.