An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.
An examination of the link between soil health and human health.
In this follow-up to The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, Montgomery and Biklé explain that we are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition. “Far too many of us remain poorly nourished despite eating more than enough food,” they write, noting the primary causes involve conventional farming practices. The authors explain the ways that these methods, including tillage and use of commercial fertilizers, disrupt the necessary, healthy symbiosis between plants and the soil. “We traded away quality in pursuit of quantity as modernized farming chased higher yields,” they write, “overlooking a farmer’s natural allies in the soil.” Alternatively, they contend, regenerative farming practices build organic matter and help maintain the fertility of the soil over a longer period of time. As in their previous book, Montgomery and Biklé offer highly readable prose, extensive research, and convincing evidence, including pertinent information on farms that have successfully implemented regenerative practices. They also share test results from gathered soil and crop samples indicating healthier soil and higher nutrient density. “Farming systems that create and maintain high levels of soil organic matter work like a savings account,” they write, “storing nutrients from one growing season to the next for the use of subsequent crops.” Another difference the authors witnessed between conventional and regenerative farming techniques is the no-till method’s greater capacity for holding water and preventing soil erosion. They take readers on a fascinating tour of a wheat mill in Washington state that bred wheat for flavor while utilizing organic techniques and point to a study that shows how wheat loses almost three-quarters of its vitamins and minerals when milled into white flour. Further, the authors explore the health benefits of consuming a diet rich in nutrients, particularly phytochemicals, from fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, which include reduced risks of dental problems, birth defects, and infectious and chronic diseases.
An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00453-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf