A lively tour of paunch and pantry that proves the adage that less is more.
The bestselling author of Tomatoland returns with a tasty exposition of diet fads and their discontents.
Estabrook, a former James Beard Award–winning contributing editor at Gourmet, opens with a familiar scenario of lament: Over the years, he has gained too much weight, the result of advancing age, inadequate exercise, and splendid dining. How to get those unwanted pounds off? “Joining the two-thirds of Americans who have medically significant amounts of weight to lose, I decided to go on a diet, something I’d never done,” he writes. The plan he chose, Whole30, was done for all the wrong reasons, he adds—it was the current fad, one whose inventors “cleverly tweaked the old paleo precepts to appeal to the social media set.” The problem was that it didn’t work. When those precepts give way to the reality of gnawing hunger, the weight comes back. Estabrook follows with a somewhat dispiriting tour of diets old and new, from the pious to the wacky—e.g., the nasty Master Cleanse, “which was invented in the 1940s but is enjoying a revival among celebrities”; the alcohol-saturated Banting diet, named for an English coffin maker whose regime consisted of “between five and seven glasses of wine, on top of his liquor-moistened morning toast and…optional tumbler of grog.” The author weighs each in the balance and finds them wanting, including the still-fashionable paleo diet, which, says one paleoanthropologist, “has no basis in archaeological reality.” After an amiable visit with French chef Jacques Pépin, who never met a food he didn’t like but has always maintained a healthy weight, Estabrook concludes with a program whose tenets seem common-sensical but also get buried in the diet-literature buzz: Take in fewer calories, avoid empty calories from sugar and alcohol, and keep track of your weight regularly with an accurate scale. His book is fittingly slender, but Estabrook packs a lot of highly useful information into a narrative that’s also enjoyably snarky.
A lively tour of paunch and pantry that proves the adage that less is more.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-399-58027-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Lorena Jones Books/Ten Speed Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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