A readable, clinically grounded overview of sleep problems and solutions.
A sleep specialist provides an overview of common sleep disorders.
John opens his nonfiction debut with some observations that have become very familiar in the tech-suffused 21st century: Large numbers of people experience a wide array of sleep-related problems, including the widespread sleep deprivation facilitated by cellphones and social media. But poor sleep health can come from a wide variety of bad habits, as the author, a physician and sleep specialist who runs a private practice in Tennessee, argues. “It is easy to take a pill or try a new hack that you found on the internet,” he writes. “But the road to good sleep is like taking the stairs; there are no quick fixes.” He elaborates on the range of health problems, physical and mental, caused by lack of sleep, and lays out a barrage of sensible and medically sound countermeasures that readers (who are almost certainly themselves sleeping poorly) can use. Many of these tips will be familiar: Banish electronics (particularly cellphones) from the bedroom, block out all light, keep the room cool, eliminate distracting noises, keep a regular schedule, don’t exercise late in the day, avoid alcohol or caffeine anywhere near bedtime, etc. As John emphasizes, many studies show that good sleep not only improves energy and alertness, but it also improves mood and mental resilience. “Sleep is essential for all aspects of health,” the author maintains, and his straightforward delivery and prose style reinforce his authority on every aspect of his subject, from sleep apnea to snoring and teeth-grinding. It’s more and more difficult to establish and maintain good sleep hygiene, and the solutions are as clear now as they’ve always been: darkness, quiet, regularity. There’s a good deal of plainspoken and well-informed advice in these pages.
A readable, clinically grounded overview of sleep problems and solutions.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781636983554
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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