Customer Reviews

Beyond 9 to 5: Your Life in Time (Maps of the Mind)

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What I like about this book is that it brings in material that many introductory books on the social and psychological features of time leave out. In addition to the usual M-time, P-time, clock time, event time (etc.) kinds of themes, Norgate presents material on lifespan differences across political and cultural divides. For instance, she details connections between war, corruption, income, and nutrition on the one hand, and the onset of menarche and menopause on the other. She attends well to cross-cultural differences in the uses of children's time, and highlights the significance of one's position in a particular intergenerational "familyscape." She covers the basics about biological clocks and the neurology of timing, motion, and the judging of intervals; but she also includes chapters on time and human infants, as well as on the temporal "diversity" that emerges from various physiological disorders and addictions. These are excellent features in a general book about time. What the book lacks is a thematic or theoretical focus that pulls all of the data together. Frequently data are recited or a chart inserted with little attention to connections with other sections of the chapter or of the book as a whole. I just used this book in a university course that explored various dimensions of time, and student comments echoed these remarks. They loved the topics and the information, but longed for a stronger thematic focus. That said, however, I'll almost certainly use this book again due to the aforementioned strengths

This book looks at time from angles and perspectives that really challenge the mind. The author is British and some words reflect differences in cultures with Americans. She also documents topics without making a point of value. It forces the reader to make their own value judgment or point from the information.