I agree with the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But after a lifetime of reading, I know that a book usually can be judged by the Introduction. So even though that's all I've read of How to Disappear, plus some browsing through the rest of the book, I'm confident that my 5-star review is entirely justified.
Busch is an elegant writer. As befits the subtlety of her subject, invisibility, she melds solid facts with a poetic sensibility. I loved this passage:
"Perhaps, too, our interest in invisibility stems from how we hide from ourselves -- how our desires, fears, hopes, and motives are concealed so deeply beneath our conscious lives and actions. Just as we have come to understand that the light visible to us is only one small section of the electromagnetic spectrum, we know that immense segments of human knowledge and experience remain unseen. The world around us is an encyclopedia of the discreet."
Busch notes that dark matter (27%) and dark energy (68%) are estimated by scientists to make up 95% of the known universe, leaving the visible world with just 5%.
Likewise, as reflected in the quotation above, modern neuroscience and psychology are aware that we human beings aren't aware of the deep dark unconscious sea that lies beneath the light bright waves of conscious awareness -- and in truth is those waves, since everything arises from the brain's hugely complex goings-on, virtually all of which we're clueless about.
Thus my already-strong interest in this book was given a boost by the early-on mention by the author that we are largely invisible even to ourselves. Frequently we say, "I can't believe I did that." Which raises the question: who are those two "I's" that inhabit our cranium? One, and maybe both, are invisible to us though seemingly existent.
If this wasn't the case, I wouldn't return to my car so often after parking it. Almost always I've pressed the lock button on the door handle, as evidenced by a flashing light inside, but whoever did that isn't the same person who wonders, "Did I lock the car?"
Here's another passage from the Introduction that makes me eager to read the rest of the book:
"At times it seemed possible that my expedition into invisibility had two parts. The invisible world contains all those things, people, and actions that are not apparent to us. But our own capacities for going unseen may be a different matter altogether. I increasingly began to see that the borders between these realms of experience are inexact, converging easily and often. The unseen world is all around us. It also is us."
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