A fine overview of an essential organ.
By definition, the heart is an organ that receives fluid containing oxygen and nutrients from the body and then pumps it back out. Tiny, one-celled organisms—and some not so tiny (flatworms, corals, jellyfish)—don’t need one; they acquire these necessities by simple diffusion from the outside. More than 500 million years ago, writes Schutt, who is also a research associate in residence at the American Museum of Natural History, muscles evolved, forming the earliest circulatory system that moved fluids around. Hearts evolved later. The heart allows animals to grow large and move fast, but it isn’t essential. Insects don’t have one, but they don’t grow large. Although most readers give priority to their own heart, the author waits until the book’s halfway point to take it up. Nonetheless, few will object to his detours, including the especially enjoyable sections on the horseshoe crab and the blue whale. Ten chapters on the human heart deliver a scattershot but satisfying mixture of history, biology, and high-tech medicine. We are aware of our heart, perhaps more than other organs, so common sense convinced people throughout history that it was the seat of consciousness and personality. The rise of scientific research led to more accurate information, but it was a bumpy process, as revealed by Schutt’s informative and gruesome history of transfusions and transplantation. This is not a self-help book, but readers will learn details of common heart diseases and their treatments. Schutt peppers his text with jokes, asides, and cute footnotes, but tolerant readers will learn a great deal. Wynne’s clean, black-and-white line drawings, especially the diagrams of complex biological systems, provide a helpful visual accompaniment to the text.
A fine overview of an essential organ.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61620-893-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
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
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