Easy-to-read, up-to-date information on the latest research into pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood.
The latest scientific findings on child-rearing from pregnancy through toddlerhood.
As Haelle (Seasons, Tides and Lunar Phases, 2016, etc.) and Willingham (The Complete Idiot's Guide to College Biology, 2010, etc.) point out in their introduction, the book does not provide advice on child care. Instead, the authors gather the latest science on a variety of issues, letting parents make their own decisions after learning what the most recent research indicates about various stages of child care. Beginning with the months and days before pregnancy has even occurred, the authors discuss the need for prenatal vitamins, weight gain of the mother and fetus, medical screenings during pregnancy, whether certain foods can affect the fetus, and how to choose the best person to assist the mother during labor. Then they move rapidly into the labor and delivery room, providing extensive information on the pros and cons of circumcision, breast-feeding vs. formula feeding, vaccines, and cloth vs. disposable diapers. Not only do they point out what is best for the infant, they also analyze the emotional ups and downs a new mother may experience, including postpartum depression, sleep deprivation, and the inability to bond with the infant. Moving beyond infancy, they discuss trips to the dentist, solid foods and food allergies, potty training, letting children use technology, air and water pollution, preschool, and a host of other pertinent topics. About 90 percent of the book centers on scientific data, but Haelle and Willingham also offer readers glimpses into their personal lives and the things they did or didn't do for their children during these first four years, which adds a more personal touch to this already accessible and informative book. For anyone headed into parenthood, this is a must-read, as it answers so many questions new parents are bound to ask.
Easy-to-read, up-to-date information on the latest research into pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17106-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Perigee/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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