Rating: 
Summary: Looking at love
Review: "Love At Goon Park" is a fascinating look at a man and his work. Deborah Blum provides the reader with an extensive and sobering background before exploring Harry Harlow's research. Did you know that as recently as the 1950s, psychologists were trying to convince parents that too much cuddling and "love" were bad for their children? Harlow, with his revolutionary experiments on baby monkeys, was bucking the conventional wisdom of his time. He was trying to say that mother's love mattered, that touch mattered, that affection mattered. His peers didn't want to hear this, but Harlow's research finally forced the profession to listen. Blum's writing is never dry, never boring. She writes with amazing flair and humanity. You'll feel that you are getting to know this person, Harry Harlow. Even more, you'll feel you are there in the lab with Harlow and his graduate students, waiting to see how the baby monkeys will react to the latest experiment. What will we learn? Will anyone listen? Blum cares, and you'll care too. You can't help but feel for the monkeys when you read this book. And Blum doesn't gloss over the issue of abuse, especially mental, that was visited on our primate cousins in the name of science. "Goon Park" takes an unflinching look at Harry Harlow, warts and all. I think her treatment of all the issues was fair and balanced. I highly recommend "Love At Goon Park." It's well-written, interesting and important.
Rating:
Summary: Looking at love
Review: "Love At Goon Park" is a fascinating look at a man and his work. Deborah Blum provides the reader with an extensive and sobering background before exploring Harry Harlow's research. Did you know that as recently as the 1950s, psychologists were trying to convince parents that too much cuddling and "love" were bad for their children? Harlow, with his revolutionary experiments on baby monkeys, was bucking the conventional wisdom of his time. He was trying to say that mother's love mattered, that touch mattered, that affection mattered. His peers didn't want to hear this, but Harlow's research finally forced the profession to listen. Blum's writing is never dry, never boring. She writes with amazing flair and humanity. You'll feel that you are getting to know this person, Harry Harlow. Even more, you'll feel you are there in the lab with Harlow and his graduate students, waiting to see how the baby monkeys will react to the latest experiment. What will we learn? Will anyone listen? Blum cares, and you'll care too. You can't help but feel for the monkeys when you read this book. And Blum doesn't gloss over the issue of abuse, especially mental, that was visited on our primate cousins in the name of science. "Goon Park" takes an unflinching look at Harry Harlow, warts and all. I think her treatment of all the issues was fair and balanced. I highly recommend "Love At Goon Park." It's well-written, interesting and important.
Rating:
Summary: Important lessons that must not be forgotten
Review: A very well written book, telling the story of a man, and of the revolution he caused in psychology. There is a lot of irony in this story. If Harry Harlow's experiments strike us as intolerably cruel now, that is due in large part because we know the results of those experiments. There are important lessons here for present and future parents, researchers, and activists. And even if you don't fall into one of those categories, it's still a fascinating story that is well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Disappointment
Review: Blum's biography of Harlow does an excellent job of examining the man and the scientist, "warts and all." Yes, it's unflinching in its descriptions of the experiments performed on macaques showing the effects of maternal deprivation; yes, it's unflinching on showing the psychology of the man who performed these experiments and the sad effects his psychological predispositions had on his personal life. Poor monkeys! Poor Harlow! But never fear; Blum is here to provide us with reassurance: it all had to be that way - really, it did. True, the experiments sound really nasty; but hey, that's just how things were done in those days. Really, it's all okay, in the long run, because now, even though we still musn't question the basic scientific premises regarding the necessity of animal research, at least we don't have to perform those particular nasty experiments anymore; and really - really - Harlow was, in his own perverted way, something of a hero. Even animal rights activists have cause to be thankful to him: because of him, we now have a convenient enemy to vilify, not to mention that desperately needed scientific proof positive that monkeys are more complex than we once believed, and hence deserve a little extra consideration. Thank you, Harry Harlow. Thank you, Deborah Blum, for puffing him back up again after the deflated view you left us with in The Monkey Wars. See people? He really wasn't such a bad guy after all. All you have to do is look at him in just the right way. . . .
Rating:
Summary: Must read
Review: Extremely well written and interesting book on a subject many might think dry and tedious. The lessons learned about love and affection are eye opening and a must read for ANY and All parents.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down...
Review: For a biography / psychology book, I was pleasantly surprised by just how readible this book is (once you start reading, plan on being glued to it until you're finished). A fascinating slice of history, it's useful and insightful reading if you're a parent (or planning on becoming one), or if you're interested in the roots of the controversy over medical research with primates, or if you're just looking for tips on what makes humans tick. Well worth the read if only to put B. F. Skinner's experiments and theories into a frightening human perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down...
Review: For a biography / psychology book, I was pleasantly surprised by just how readible this book is (once you start reading, plan on being glued to it until you're finished). A fascinating slice of history, it's useful and insightful reading if you're a parent (or planning on becoming one), or if you're interested in the roots of the controversy over medical research with primates, or if you're just looking for tips on what makes humans tick. Well worth the read if only to put B. F. Skinner's experiments and theories into a frightening human perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Science of love and the darker love for science
Review: Harry Harlow was an "envelope pusher" who,increasingly driven to find answers to the most fundamental questions about why we both need and give love, transformed himself into a strident and self-righteous researcher -- admired and hated by his colleagues. This book tells the story in a gripping manner, really putting the reader "inside the mind-set" of a researcher who, driven by his own sense of being unloved, developed a seeming manaic compulsion to dissect and analyze the nature of love. He did it in a way that both enthralled and infuriated others.
The primate research lab at the department of psychology of the University of Madison is the setting for this absorbing book. Here, we also learn of academic subterfuge and conspiracy, and the irony of psychologists behaving in a severely dysfunctional manner. The title refers to the address of the lab, which was 600 N. Park, but often looked like "Goon Park" when scrawled by hand on envelopes and memos. This is great science writing that is balanced, insightful, and manages to capture both the beauty and the ugliness of scientific research without taking a pious stance. Quite a neat trick, but Deborah Blum pulls it off and brings this overlooked episode of psychology research into the forefront of our understanding of how science is really practiced. Very readable, with fascinating insights throughout. Even if you're thinking "Harry WHO?" you will, after completing this book, feel that everyone should know about his life and work.
Rating:
Summary: All teachers should read this, too.
Review: I am one of the millions of people in the USA with an education degree who are not teachers. Behavior theory is the rule of the school today. I couldn't figure out why we treat children like guinea pigs instead of like the human beings that they are. This book opened my eyes. There IS more to life than rewards and consequences. I think science has backed itself into a corner, though, because religion has a corner on the love and respect market and science has repeatedly assured us that all that spiritual stuff is nonsense. This book is a must read for anyone with an accessible heart.
Rating:
Summary: Good Historical Perspective
Review: Like many others, I never forgot the pictures in my intro psych text of Hary Harlow's baby monkies and their surrogate mothers. Blum's very readable book reviews Harlow's work and places it in the historical context of psychology and the social perspectives the middle part of the 1900's.
Although the descriptions of Harlow's experiments were well written, the last chapters of Blum's book were most interesting to me. In these chapters, Blum describes the feminist and animal rights back lash against Harlow's work. One can't help be stunned by the irony that Harlow's work, which ultimently championed the importance of mothers' relationships to their children and the deep intelligence of monkies (and their similarities to human beings), would be vilified by these groups. Blum's book is, thus, not only about one of the most innovative psychologists of the past century, but also a great perspective of how we change our thinking about what we are as a species. It is far more than a book about the man who took baby monkies away from their mothers.
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