It started with occasional discussions during coffee (“one should finally write a book like that”) and ended, years later, with finally holding this book in hand. The textbook “The Lateralized Brain: The Neuroscience and Evolution of Hemispheric Asymmetries” by Sebastian Ocklenburg & Onur Güntürkün achieves many functions at the same time: It is an entertaining overview of twelve different areas of research on brain asymmetries; each chapter starting with a short story and proceeding with wit and colorful pictures. The book is also a resource for scientists who would like to find a timely overview on different aspects of lateralization with hundreds of references. Last but not least, this book tries to achieve a change of mind in the area of brain asymmetry research. For too long, this field saw itself outside of neurobiology, outside of the animal kingdom, and outside of a serious evolutionary scope. By embedding asymmetry research in these areas, this book works for a kind of science on left-right differences that thrieves for mechanistic explanations of open questions. And in the very end, it was also fun to write it; Sort of.

Ocklenburg, S. and Güntürkün, O., The Lateralized Brain: The Neuroscience and Evolution of Hemispheric Asymmetries, London: Academic Press, 2017.