Incredibly insightful and thought provoking book that explored multiple faucets of signing and gestures.

Thinking with Your Hands by Susan Goldin-Meadow is fascinating. It explains the science behind why humans talk with their hands and how that improves one's understanding of various concepts. Through different scientific studies Susan and her colleagues learn more about this interesting topic.

This was an interesting and informative audiobook about nonverbal communication. I enjoyed listening to it and found some helpful information that can apply to my daily life. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to listen to this book.

This book was very good. Helpful and eye opening.
I hope to read more by this author
This was very interesting

I listened to this ebook as I thought it would help me with my mentoring practice and I was right. While most of the research centered on children, I took away some very interesting insights into how we think as humans and how our hands and gestures show up in our thinking.

The book was well-paced and while it did sometimes feel like I was listening to the same research presented again, I imagine that would not be the case with the written book, as it was signposting back to different areas in the text.

This book would make a great read for anyone involved in early years education, teaching more broadly, or parents wanting to support their children with language development in all its guises.

I received an ebook ARC via Netgalley.

"Thinking with Your Hands" was an enjoyable nonfiction book focused on the gestures we use in everyday communication — movements we make with our hands as we speak, whether or not people can see us. As a psych major, this book fell firmly in a comfort zone for me, as Golden-Meadow dives into research on linguistics and how our brains process communication. Some readers who are not as comfortable with that format may find it a little heavy on the research side, but I appreciated that the content was rooted in the behavioral sciences. It was fascinating to learn that we gesture not just for others, but more for ourselves, and that gesturing can reveal thinking patterns we aren't even yet aware we have. I would consider this a must-read for teachers, as there are clear actionable tips you can put into use in the classroom, both in enhancing students' understanding of the material and in understanding the level of comprehension each student currently has. While those concepts can certainly be extrapolated beyond school walls, I did find myself wishing there were more tips for the general public on how to become a more clear communicator through gestures or how to be more aware of the gestures you make. Overall, this was a solid read and the narration on the audiobook was pleasant and well done.

It's a pretty well known fact that I'd be a lifelong student if I had the funds to do so. Because of that, this book appealed to me on a lot of levels. I do a fair bit of presenting and public speaking, and regularly interact with my employees and my clients. While I expected "Thinking With Your Hands: Supporting the Science Behind How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts" to be about how working with your hands helped the person gesturing learn, it was actually much more about how to teach others and take cues from what their hands are telling you. Even with the slightly misleading title, I very much enjoyed this book.

A few fun take-aways:
- Gestures come for free when you learn a language. Even when they’ve never seen the gestures before! A blind person learning a language will start to form the gestures that seeing folks make while speaking. This happens differently with all languages, and the better you know a language, the more you "magically" pick up the gestures without external visual sources.
- Gestures can change your mind, or make you a bit more open to having your mind changed. (This is something to think about when arguing on the internet.)
- If your gestures and speech don’t match, you’re ready to change or learn the next step. (I LOVE THIS.)

The book was formatted well, and easy to follow in audio format. Additionally, I liked how often the author mentions contributors - that's not something I see a lot in books like this.

All in, I would recommend this one. It does go on for a bit longer than I'd have maybe chosen, but it could easily be broken into parts and enjoyed overtime to really let the information sink in. I'd say it's good recommendation for teachers of younger children especially.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media & Basic Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I have a friend who wildly gesticulates when she talks, and she always insists it’s because she’s a Italian. “We Italian’s think and talk with our hands,” is what she often says, so a scientific book focused around the study of gestures definitely got my interest. While I thought the writing style was a bit too clinical, there is no denying how fascinating the subject matter is. The book explores how people having been using gestures to communicate since the very start. How gesturing can enhance our learning/understanding. How our gestures sometimes contradict what we’re saying with our words. How it’s a universal thing. The deaf do it. The blind do it. Heck, there is even discussion of how amputees do it, or at least they ‘feel’ as if they do it. The narration is solid, though as I stated earlier I think the style is a bit too clinical, which I suppose can be somewhat excused given the subject matter, but at times I felt bogged down by some of the information, like being in a college lecture. Interesting, certainly, and yet at times somewhat tedious. Some of it just gave be flashbacks to when I was at college and having to review scientific journals. Definitely interesting information and I’m certainly glad I listened to the book book, I just wish some of the technical data it could have been more laymen friendly. I’d like to thank Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of the audio version of Thinking with Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2PF9Z171KXONF/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

This audiobook was very interesting, it was informative and bought up some points for me to think and read further about.

It was well narrated and I feel this added to the overall audiobook experience.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This book on the importance of gesturing covers how gestures affect learning and retention, reveal hidden biases, and are universal in their use.

I found the differentiation between gestures and signing to be interesting, and the difference between acquired gestures and instinctual gestures, especially in terms of “home signs,” or the invented language of a person who has never learned formal sign language.

Another interesting section was about the universality of gesture and how even blind people will gesture in conversation with each other and how their gestures are similar to those across cultures, despite never having seen them.

This would have been a very interesting article, but in a book format, it did become a little monotonous and was bogged down by over-describing the details, conditions, and processes of each academic study, when the findings and highlights would have been more appropriate for a general audience.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an advanced copy of this book.

**Listened to the audio book**

This book was a pleasant surprise. I knew I would enjoy it - obviously why I chose to read it in the first place. But there was so much to this book.
I found this book super interesting, especially when it referred to learning difficulties and early diagnosis.

I've always been told I speak a lot with my hands, but who knew how much it says about me as a person. It's not something i've overly thought about, as it seems like a very small part of everyday life - and not something I have overly noticed - but this book has made me look at things in a totally different way. In particular how younger children use gestures.

At times this book felt a little overwhelming with the science/amount of detail but overall I was left completely fascinated.