IT'S ONLY SLOW FOOD UNTIL YOU TRY TO EAT IT

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IT'S ONLY SLOW FOOD UNTIL YOU TRY TO EAT IT

Name: IT'S ONLY SLOW FOOD UNTIL YOU TRY TO EAT IT
Author: Bill Heavey
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1955-1

MISADVENTURES OF A SUBURBAN HUNTER GATHERER

by Bill Heavey ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2013

Really an overblown magazine article, lightly and pleasantly enough written, though without the depth of like-minded...

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In which an inside-the-Beltway type goes all Euell Gibbons on us—and doesn’t starve to death and even finds true love in the bargain.

Granted, Heavey isn’t your typical D.C. commuter: A freelance writer, he hunts, fishes and contributes columns and pieces to magazines such as Field & Stream, Outside, and Men’s Journal on hook-and-bullet subjects—though, as he describes it, he is blessed with more enthusiasm than art. Here, he describes, as both literary project and life hacking, his efforts to live closer to the land, lessening his reliance on grocery stores and big carbon footprints in favor of heading out into the world to gather baskets full of goodies. His travels, sad to say, require big carbon footprints, as he jets off to the Arctic and the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. What he brings back, apart from mushrooms, serviceberries and wild rice, are stories of how people of all sorts have gone back to the land, some out of necessity and custom, others by choice. One neighbor, for instance, is a combat veteran who has mastered the flora of the region, a solid candidate for survival come the apocalypse. (And apocalypse, meltdown and the end of civilization are never far from some of these back-to-the-landers’ thoughts.) Heavey describes himself as “not the most likely guy to write a book about food,” a matter he skirts around by writing about many things other than food. However, he does provide some useful recipes for dishes such as boiled ground squirrel, fried perch and sautéed dandelion greens (to be found in lawns and parks, with the proviso, “What you’re trying to do is avoid herbicides”).

Really an overblown magazine article, lightly and pleasantly enough written, though without the depth of like-minded projects by Bill Bryson, Jim Harrison and others.

Pub Date: May 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-8021-1955-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013

Categories:

SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SHOULD THE TENT BE BURNING LIKE THAT?
by Bill Heavey

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU'RE NOT LOST IF YOU CAN STILL SEE THE TRUCK
by Bill Heavey

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WHY WE SWIM

by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

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A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.

For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

Pub Date: April 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY | HEALTH & FITNESS | SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SARAH AND THE BIG WAVE
by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN CHINATOWN
by Bonnie Tsui

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CONCUSSION

by Jeanne Marie Laskas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2015

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...

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A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.

Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.