Bestselling author and life motivator Greene (The Life You Want, 2010, etc.) plumbs the secrets to looking and feeling younger.
Together with a team of medical experts, the author explores the building blocks of youthfulness and how to turn back the clock on aging to recapture the vigor of a healthy mind and body. In the introduction, the 50-something author references the grueling training and reserve that was necessary when he bicycled cross-country on a multi-city book tour. What he took away from that experience was improved “mental and emotional clarity,” along with a physical soundness he’d never believed he could achieve. Reinvigorated, Greene shares his wellspring of knowledge on how to combine the latest advances in anti-aging science with a practical daily regimen. He introduces a four-part system galvanizing the benefits of regular exercise, healthful nutrition, skin care and restorative sleep. The author presents several theories on why we age and what can be done to reverse its effects on our minds and bodies. Exercise is as much a key component, Greene stresses, as mindful eating, and he presents a detailed fitness program along with pages of recommended “superfoods” touted to boost energy and longevity. Cautionary advice on the dangers of “killer compounds” like saturated and trans-fats, sodium and refined sugar is blatantly conventional, but can serve as a helpful reminder when combined with recommendations on skin care, sunscreen and an 11-point plan to maximize the benefits of sleep. The closing chapter provides a sensible food plan featuring recipes for Sweet Potato and Turkey Shepherd’s Pie, Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes and Slow-Cooked Lamb. Together with stress control and the power of a positive attitude, Greene firmly demonstrates that it’s never too late for anyone to look and feel their best. Timely, accessible and compelling guidance from a veteran health-and-wellness guru.
Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-13378-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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
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