The Master and His Emissary

Once in a while we encounter in our life that kind of books that influence us tremendously. That books seem to bend our whole worldview, its vocabulary becomes our own and forces us to think in its terms, long after the lecture. For me, "The Master and His Emissary" belonged to that category. After reading Iain McGilchrist magnum opus I couldn't help, but tried to fit every new information I obtained across many fields into its intriguing framework. Significant disclaimer, I learned about this book through hard to categorize podcast "Fight Like An Animal" and they blended in my mind to certain degree, so it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between content of the book and the podcast's interpretation of it.

Let's start from the beginning though. The title doesn't particularly help to guess what the book is about, but its subtitle "The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" could give away the idea more easily. First part of the book discusses