A provocative book that lies on the edges of the self-help universe.
Power, money, sex: Those “mitochondrial imperatives” drive us, but the shell surrounding them can be tweaked to make the ride smoother.
Life-hacking guru Asprey (Head Strong: The Bulletproof Plan to Activate Untapped Brain Energy to Work Smarter and Think Faster—in Just Two Weeks, 2017, etc.), inventor of “bulletproof coffee” and other concoctions, surveys “maverick scientists, world-class athletes, biochemists, innovative MDs, shamans, Olympic nutritionists,” and other such outlying types in order to cobble a system by which, following the rules, readers are meant to become smarter, faster, and happier. Each of those key comparatives comes with a packet of rules and exercises, the first law among which is already widespread: “Use the power of No,” meaning say no more often to the things and people that demand your time. Saying no takes many forms, including reducing the number of choices one has to make in daily life. Buy a simple wardrobe like Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck, eat the same things for breakfast, and put your elective energy into more important decisions. Asprey’s montage of pop-psych from several sources will be familiar to self-help readers (“‘Can’t’ is always a lie”; “When you label something 'bad,’ you miss out on an opportunity to figure out how it can be good”). Less run-of-the-mill is the author’s cheerleading for the use of psychotropic and nootropic drugs; his enthusiasm for LSD would cheer Timothy Leary, while he ties his advocacy of mood enhancement to mental flexibility (and, naturally, has a line of products available to seal the deal). He also advocates for other good things of life, from vitamin D3 to “conscious sex with the right people.” Traditional moralists and gym rats may find some of Asprey’s ideas unsettling, but those who are familiar with more free-form notions of life extension and biohacking will be encouraged to "stop doing the things that make you weak and start doing more of the things that will make you stronger.”
A provocative book that lies on the edges of the self-help universe.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265244-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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