The first half was great. Maybe even 5 stars great. Very informative on all things with the brain. The last half though did not deliver on the ambition - to plot the development of human progress with the use and influence of the two hemispheres and how they differed. Mcgilchrist went way too deep on the development of art with little connection on how this related to hemisphere differences. In fact I lost what point he was even making. As far as I took it, we don't have concious control of what hemispheres we are using, making such competition in hemispheres uses seem nonsensical.

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Nothing short of a masterpiece. Uses neurology, psychology, philosophy, and culture to dis-integrate the mind for examination and re-integrate the findings into a new indivisible whole.

At times very dense and slavish in its scientific inquiry into the asymmetry of the brain, McGilchrist makes a good argument for why the totality of a thing is sometimes more valuable than its component parts—and just because we can distill and deconstruct we don't always gain value in the doing.

McGilchris's book is a recent, authoritative, and generally accessible summary of the current state of neuroscience with regard to brain lateralization, supplemented by a provocative reading of the history of Western culture in light of this research. More: http://dreamflesh.com/library/iain-mcgilchrist/the-master-and-his-emissary/