A vague assessment of an otherwise interesting topic.
Encouragement to mix science and spirituality as a way to harness energy.
Poleo’s (Defending Against Psychic Attacks, 2013, etc.) latest work starts off with the declaration that “humans seem to have inborn capacities to accomplish…unusual actions.” Those capacities, it seems, can be channeled through qi gong, a Chinese system of controlling subtle energy. Before Poleo delves further into his discussion of qi gong, he gives a bit of personal background: Since 1989, he’s been traveling to China nearly every year for work and has relished the opportunity to learn about Eastern philosophy. He then focuses on combining both scientific concepts and religious theory to prove the existence of the paranormal and of divine energy within humans; he turns to physics to discuss energy by using ideas related to vibration and string theory and writes about altered states of consciousness—first about how religions approach them and then about the science behind them (he devotes a bit of time to brain-wave activity). It will be unclear to readers what exactly qi gong is, what it does and how we can practice it; though there are chapters devoted to its presence in healing, sexuality and superstrength, Poleo’s explanation of qi gong doesn’t get much clearer. The conversation seems to frequently go off track—he takes so much time breaking down key words and concepts that the main ideas feel fragmented. He writes that the “three basic concepts required to fully understand the discussion in this book are systems, energy, and vibration.” There is then a tedious exploration of what a system is, with a footnote elucidating what a subsystem is, and an explanation that the human system is made up of three main subsystems. Though it’s surely important to fully grasp each concept the author presents, only those totally interested in understanding qi gong will have the amount of patience required for these kinds of definition breakdowns. The writing is decent, balanced but passionate, although there are some moments of political incorrectness—Poleo refers to Inuits as Eskimos and writes about an “Indian tribe in a remote part of the Amazon jungle.” Near the beginning of the book, he writes that some people use the word “energy” “improperly and recklessly,” and if they’re asked how they define or measure that energy, “they will just babble, unable to provide a logical or coherent answer.” Despite the book’s best efforts, this consideration of qi gong feels similarly jumbled.
A vague assessment of an otherwise interesting topic.Pub Date: May 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495450174
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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