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
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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