![]() ![]() He retired from basketball and became a baseball player. In between his three-peats Michael Jordan did something that shocked the world. I said that I have, that in my line of work he’s rather difficult to avoid. “Have you ever met Michael Jordan?” he asked. At one point, leaning over the rail-it was the Asian side, not the European side, if memory serves-he asked what I do for a living in America. The guide for this morning tour for two was a young Turk who was doing his job by the numbers. One day I found myself on a boat wending its way up the Bosporus, which not only divides a city-Istanbul-but splits two continents as well. This is how Ira Berkow, the longtime sports columnist at the New York Times, opens a profile on Jordan: He is known the world over for his athletic accomplishments. A few years later he led the Bulls to a second three-peat. In the early-1990s he led the Chicago Bulls to three NBA championships in a row-a three-peat. ![]() The soaring maneuver earned him the nickname Air Jordan. ![]() Jordan’s most famous feat was literally flying across the court from the free throw line for a slam dunk. The Associated Press lists him as second best-just behind Babe Ruth. ESPN says he was the greatest athlete in North America in the twentieth century. This is because Jordan was such an exceptional athlete, he became a phenomenon. Even if you do not follow sports you know his name: Michael Jordan. The story is about the most famous basketball player in history. This is a book about politics, but a sports story illustrates one of its themes-that voters don’t seem to be very good at their job-better than any political story I know. Why people who don’t vote and don’t follow the news don’t think they need to In this engaging, illuminating, and often riotous chronicle of our political culture, Shenkman probes the depths of the human mind to explore how we can become more political, and less animal. The scientists’ findings give us new ways of understanding our history and ourselves - and prove we don’t have to be prisoners of our evolutionary past.” ![]() Shenkman takes readers on a whirlwind tour of laboratories where scientists are exploring how sea slugs remember, chimpanzees practice deception, and patients whose brains have been split in two tell stories. Pop culture tells us we can trust our instincts, but science is proving that when it comes to politics our Stone Age brain often malfunctions, misfires, and leads us astray.įortunately, we can learn to make our instincts work in our favor. Shenkman argues that, contrary to what we tell ourselves, it’s our instincts rather than arguments appealing to reason that usually prevail. Political Animals challenges us to go beyond the headlines, which often focus on what politicians do (or say they’ll do), and to concentrate instead on what’s really important: what shapes our response. Drawing on science, politics, and history, Shenkman explores the hidden forces behind our often illogical choices. But as bestselling historian Rick Shenkman explains in Political Animals, our world is anything but rational. Can a football game affect the outcome of an election? What about shark attacks? Or a drought? In a rational world the answer, of course, would be no. ![]()
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