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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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