Full of hard facts, good science and excellent illustrations, this is the bomb–and just the thing for crafting the stuff of...
A sticky, satisfying vade mecum, and a horticulturally sound guide to producing tasty bud–for medical purposes only, of course.
In these complicated times, the Cultivator’s Handbook of Marijuana (1986), favorite of the Whole Earth crowd and an erstwhile bible, all simple line drawings and hippie encouragement, gives way to Cervantes’s careful science ("Near the end of normal vegetative growth, plants grown from seed develop pre-flowers. This is when female calyx formation initiates, and it is not contingent upon photoperiod") and consumer-advocate field testing ("Be careful when purchasing ballasts that are made in China or Asia, in general. . .. Cheap transformers, capacitors, and starters are cheap because they are of inferior quality"). The prose is rich in information but never dense or unreadable, while the photographs are a blend of High Times and Playboy, with a touch of THX 1138 thrown in for good measure. (We’re talking the white Visqueen that lines the grow room, man. Don’t freak. And whatever you do, don’t think of Soylent Green.) Of course, Cervantes knows that the sap-dripping, ever-so-healthy plants thus portrayed are no-nos, which explains his helpful checklist for avoiding The Man: Keep to a regular schedule, be pleasant but brief with the neighbors, use a friend’s car to visit the grow store and "Never open the grow room door for anybody!" It takes more than all that, though, since The Man has access to all kinds of technological sniffing and profiling toys, so Cervantes includes some nifty tips for shielding the grow room from escaping light, heat signatures, ozone smells and all those other cannabis-related giveaways. And the portraits of various hydroponic and grow-light setups are a real inspiration to do-it-yourself types.
Full of hard facts, good science and excellent illustrations, this is the bomb–and just the thing for crafting the stuff of righteous bombers. For medical purposes only, of course.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 187882323X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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