Right Hand, Left Hand

Chris McManus's dazzlingly written debut takes familiar, almost childish, questions and for the first time for a popular audience answers them: Why are most people right-handed? Do left-handers behave differently to right-handers? Why is the heart on the left-hand side of the body (and why is it related to the fact that most people are right handed)? Why is each side of the human brain so different? Why do the British drive on the left? Why do European languages go from left to right, while Arabic ones read the other way? Why do clocks go clockwise? Why are human bodies symmetrical on the outside, but not on the inside? Why don't identical twins always have the same dominant hand? What is the relationship between handedness and speech disorders, such as stuttering? Why are male testicles unbalanced? Right Hand, Left Hand uses sources as diverse as the paintings of Rembrandt and the sculpture of Michelangelo, the behaviour of Canadian cichlid fish, the orig ins of medieval iconography, the history of medicine and the story of early cartography. Modern cognitive science, the history of the Wimbledon tennis championship and the biographies of great musicians are also used to explain the vast repertoire of 'left-right' symbolism that permeates our everyday lives. The book answers wonderfully deep and simple questions about why the universe, the human body and our minds and cultures are so full of distinctions between left and right.