For stalwart Chopra fans only.
More alleged illuminations of the symbiotic mind-body relationship.
“The quantum model offers a solution because it is based on ‘real’ reality,” asserts prolific author Chopra, a prominent proponent of New Age perspectives and approaches to holistic health. Of the 30+ years since the publication of his book Quantum Healing, he writes, “it has taken all this time to reveal many findings that were only hinted at until medical science, physics, and biology caught up.” In this collaboration with physics professor Tuszynski and endocrinologist Fertig, Chopra argues that the book is “offering a revolutionary perspective.” In this well-intentioned yet thorny and grandiose book, the authors claim that “your real body isn’t what you think it is…Your real body is a quantum creation.” Corollaries to this premise include: “To find out who you really are, we must go to a place hardly anyone ever thinks about—infinity”; “Your brain will never lead you to expanded awareness or higher states of consciousness”; “You stand at the pivot point of creation, because your body is defined by how you relate to it.” As he has in many previous books, from Perfect Health to Total Meditation, Chopra draws from yogic texts—e.g., “Existence contains everything, which is why in ancient India the all-encompassing unity of existence was named Brahman, from the Sanskrit root that means ‘to grow or expand.’ Brahman is the ultimate reality because it can expand infinitely.” In chapters with titles such as “Reality Is Experience” and “Infinity Is the New Normal,” the authors repeatedly attempt to bolster the “two most powerful conclusions that drive this book: Well-being is weakened whenever there is a failure of intelligence. Well-being is strengthened when intelligence flows naturally.” Devotees of holistic medicine may find enough to ponder, but the authors overcomplicate most of the insights they claim to clarify.
For stalwart Chopra fans only.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780593579985
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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