Can You Make Yourself Smarter?
– Dan Hurley

Can you make yourself, your kids, and your parents smarter?

Expanding upon one of the most-read New York Times Magazine features of 2012, Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power penetrates the hot new field of intelligence research to reveal what researchers call a revolution in human intellectual abilities. Shattering decades of dogma, scientists began publishing studies in 2008 showing that “fluid intelligence” — the ability to learn, solve novel problems, and get to the heart of things — can be increased through training.

But is it all just hype? With vivid stories of lives transformed, science journalist Dan Hurley delivers practical findings for people of every age and ability. Along the way, he narrates with acid-tongued wit his experiences as a human guinea pig, road-testing commercial brain-training programs, learning to play the Renaissance lute, getting physically fit, even undergoing transcranial direct current stimulation.

Smarter speaks to the audience that made bestsellers out of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain and Moonwalking with Einstein. [From: Goodreads.com]

Dan Hurley is an award-winning science journalist whose 2012 feature in The New York Times Magazine, “Can You Make Yourself Smarter?” was one of the magazine’s most-read articles of the year. Featured in the 2013 PBS documentary feature, “Smarter Brains,” Dan has written on the science of increasing intelligence for the Washington Post and Neurology Today. His previous book, Diabetes Rising, was excerpted in Discover and Wired. He has written nearly two dozen articles for the New York Times since 2005.

But wait. Dan also has a secret identity. Beginning on the streets of Chicago in 1983, with a manual typewriter and a little sign that said “60-Second Novels, Written While You Wait,” Dan began writing instant stories for passersby. Although started as an exercise in creativity, the stories soon evolved into a kind of instant biography. To celebrate his 10th anniversary, in 1993 he wrote a story from the 18th-floor roof of a Times Square skyscraper on a sheet of high-strength paper that descended to the sidewalk over the course of 18 hours. In 1995, when America Online was the leading Internet access provider, Dan created a writing site for AOL that enjoyed years of popularity. He also published a book collecting his favorite stories. These days Dan still occasionally writes 60-Second Novels at special events around the United States. Maybe that’s what keeps him smarter? [From: Danhurley.com]

 Other Books by Dan Hurley:

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• Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It

Diabetes Rising is a gripping expose of the quest for a cure for the disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people around the world. Hurley chronicles today’s diabetes epidemic — how the disease has grown so dramatically, why the American Diabetes Association focuses its attention on just a small handful of available treatments, and why the research being done today doesn’t look beyond accepted types of treatments. Just as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation uncovered the sordid details leading to an epidemic of obesity, Dan Hurley uncovers the hidden truths of what is being researched — and even more importantly, what is not.

Diabetes Rising explores both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, one of the leading causes of deaths in the United States. With ground-breaking research and compelling stories seen through an investigative, historical, and narrative lens, Diabetes Rising couples big-picture insight with intimate reporting. The book yields riveting insight into the struggle between the pervasive malady and the medical community’s ongoing search for answers. Informed but not dominated by the author’s own experience as a Type 1 diabetic, Diabetes Rising grants exclusive access to new studies, innovative treatments, and determined patients. Hurley’s sharp, entertaining, and provocative read will change how readers understand diabetes, and the cultures, conditions, and medical climates in which it thrives. [From: Barnesandnoble.com]

• Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America’s Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry

A riveting work of investigative journalism that charts the rise of the dietary supplement craze and reveals the dangerous — and sometimes deadly — side of these highly popular and completely unregulated products.

Over 60 percent of Americans buy and take herbal and dietary supplements for all sorts of reasons — to prevent illness (vitamin C), to ease depression (St. John’s wort), to aid weight loss (ephedra), to boost the memory (ginkgo biloba), and even to cure cancer (shark cartilage, bloodroot) — despite the fact that few of these “natural” supplements have been proven to be safe or effective. The vitamin and herbal supplement industry generates over $20 billion a year by selling products that promise to cure or fix, but are produced and marketed essentially without oversight. And while the media has been quick to sensationalize the benefits of supplements, few have taken a hard look at the dangers posed by many of the remedies flooding the market today. Award-winning journalist Dan Hurley breaks the silence for the first time in Natural Causes. 
From the snake-oil salesmen of the early twentieth century, to rise of the health food movement in the sixties and seventies, Hurley charts the remarkable growth of an industry built largely on fraud, and reveals the backroom politics that led to the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which effectively freed the industry from FDA oversight. In unprecedented detail, he shows how supplement manufacturers have concealed the truth about dozens of untested treatments and the shocking rise in deaths, disfigurements, and life-threatening injuries caused by products deceptively promoted as “safe and natural.” Most importantly, he provides a telling look at why, in an age of unprecedented scientific advancement, we continue to buy and believe in remedies for which little evidence exists — and why the supplements we take to promote our health may be doing far more harm than good. 
As Hurley shows, the dietary supplement craze may be one of the greatest swindles ever perpetrated on the American public — one that feeds billions of dollars each year into the pockets of lobbyists, politicians, and any charlatan who wants to slap a label on a bottle and tout it as the next big “natural cure.” Blending hard facts with spellbinding personal stories, Natural Causes is a must-read for anyone who has ever popped a multivitamin or an herb, and provides a hard-hitting, frightening look at a cultural trend that is out of control. [From: Goodreads.com]

• The 60-Second Novelist: What 22,613 People Taught Me about Life

On Sunday, April 24, 1983, at about 2 p.m., I carried my 28 -pound 1953 Royal typ

ewriter and a folding chair through the stiff wind of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, In front of the Old Water, Tower, I opened the folding chair, sat down with the typewriter in my lap and taped a sign to the back of it “60-Second Novels, Written While you Wait.”

So begins the most original book in a generation — Dan Hurley’s inspiring true tale of how he escaped his desk job to write the life stories of over 22,613 people (and counting!), from Chicago to New York, in Iowa farmhouses, Midwestern, malls and California convenience stores. Hurley has listened as children and crack addicts, the homeless and the famous, poured out their confessions and a lifetime of wisdom. Now he shares the most incredible true stories he’s heard (including the one from a pretty woman named Alice; whom he ended up marrying) and what they taught him about life, love, health, money and making dreams come true. With over one hundred photographs and sixty of the original stories he wrote for Vanna White, Tom Brokaw and thousands of, other people you’ve never heard of. You will laugh, cry, and feel as though Dan packed you into his suitcase alongside his typewriter. [From: Barnesandnoble.com]

Now Watch His Video:

Can You Make Yourself Smarter? ; TIME 15:23