An appealing introduction to healthy living.
A simple guide to active living aimed at women over 60.
Stewart-Roache and Yarnell met on a Semester at Sea voyage and realized that they shared the same dedication to fitness, despite having different body types and being 62 and 70 years old, respectively. The two decided to create a basic fitness handbook for older women complete with information addressing frequent senior health problems such as arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis and loss of vision, taste or hearing. Noting that most fitness articles aimed at older people promise to extend life or reverse aging, the authors focus on fitness as a way to improve the overall quality of one’s life rather than a way to erase wrinkles or turn back the clock. Stewart-Roache and Yarnell’s refreshing, no-nonsense attitude toward aging can be summed up by their brusque, introductory statement that “old can be active old or rocking chair old.” The book continues in a similarly conversational tone, with the first half consisting of a quick introduction to nutrition and aerobic exercise, interspersed with notes of friendly encouragement. Much of the nutrition wisdom is somewhat typical (such as encouragement to eat antioxidants and avoid high-fructose corn syrup), but the book also includes useful information on eating to avoid diabetes and the authors’ personal tips for maintaining a healthy weight. The fitness section includes information on achieving one’s target heart rate and proper warm-up and cool-down procedures, followed by tips to avoid injury and advice for staying goal-oriented. The remaining half of the book consists of useful reference information including charts of vitamins and minerals, exercise plans, goal sheets, healthy recipes and examples of the fitness plans followed by other older women. The authors provide short exercise plans for running, bicycling, yoga and swimming, but encourage women to explore other, equally healthy activities, such as ping-pong, scuba diving, skiing and golf. Fitness veterans may find the book lacks sufficient research or depth, but it’s a excellent start for beginners.
An appealing introduction to healthy living.Pub Date: April 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-913478-11-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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