Diligently researched and relevant to canine owners and animal scientists alike; a serious addition to dog health literature.
A debut book explores the dog obesity “epidemic.”
Schulof, whose recreational participation in endurance sports attuned him to body fat’s impact on athletic performance, wondered how he could keep his own dog fit and healthy. His research revealed that “at least half of the dogs in America today are overweight,” which led him on a quest to determine how best to fight canine obesity. This rather remarkable study veers from Schulof’s personal experiences into a weighty scientific treatise about obesity—to some extent, both human and canine. The author approaches the challenge much like an investigative journalist. He does exhaustive research that examines the ancient connection between dogs and wolves, digs into the similarities and differences between human and canine obesity, explores the role of carbohydrates in human and canine diets, and uncovers the seemingly sinister influence of giants in the pet-food industry. Schulof’s keen observation that there is virtually no obesity in wolves while domestic dogs suffer from it is just the tip of the iceberg; the real revelation is that wolves consume a high-quality natural meat diet while most dogs are fed a regimen high in carbohydrates by their owners. The author discovers that the science of canine obesity tracks closely with that of human corpulence; the latest research suggests that carbs, not fat, are to blame: “The most glaring finding that emerges from the literature on canine metabolism is the same one that comes out of studies conducted on human subjects: drastically reducing carbohydrate intake, or eliminating carbs altogether, brings blood sugar and insulin levels crashing back down to earth.” The second half of this strong book is perhaps more eye-opening and potentially scandalous, as Schulof exposes the carb-focused leanings of the pet-food industry, which, in a nod to big pharma, he labels “Big Kibble.” Even the nebulous nature of pet-food labeling is suspect. Quite a bit of this work is technical and scientific but nonetheless intriguing and current. Exhaustive notes and an extensive bibliography make the book all the more impressive.
Diligently researched and relevant to canine owners and animal scientists alike; a serious addition to dog health literature.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-76840-2
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Present Tense Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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