by Brian Switek ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019
Switek belongs to the science-shouldn’t-be-boring school of writing, but readers who can tolerate his steady stream of...
A cheerful popular-science romp through the matter that makes up our skeleton.
Writers on human body parts usually concentrate on the heart, lungs, brain, and reproductive organs. Science writer Switek (My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs, 2013, etc.) leaves the beaten path to deliver a fun explanation of the history, function, and cultural meaning of bone. As the author notes early on, life was squishy for billions of years. Less than 500 million years ago, bone “got its start as rigid plate armor on the outside of a primordial fish, but as the pieces sunk inside they became an interlocking framework that never shifts by itself, yet…allows for the sensational range of motion our species is capable of.” Bone is hard but not too hard. It contains about 30 percent collagen, identical to the connective tissue that makes up our ligaments and tendons. The other 70 percent is a mineral called hydroxyapatite (tooth enamel, much harder, contains more than 90 percent). Switek does his duty by bone science, but his heart is in bone disease and bone culture. The best fossils (human included) contain fractures and cut marks that reveal how the creature lived and perhaps died. Ancient bones regularly turn up as jewelry and building material; converting human skulls to drinking cups and art objects has a long history. The author gives King Richard III’s recently exhumed bones their own chapter. In the 19th century, collectors assembled thousands of skulls and expressed confidence that they revealed the essence of race, character, and intelligence. It’s unlikely that most readers believe they were right, but the author goes to great length to show that they weren’t.
Switek belongs to the science-shouldn’t-be-boring school of writing, but readers who can tolerate his steady stream of whimsy, jokes, and drollery will receive a painless, mostly illuminating education on his subject.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-18490-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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