A practical, optimistic, and densely informative text aimed at preventing chronic disease.
Lyman offers a medical guide analyzing the latest advancements in (and rewards of) maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Now in his 90s, the author draws on his lengthy career as an investigative medical journalist and writer about chronic diseases in this primer for proactively managing certain chronic diseases. Lyman believes that, while modern science has fortified life and made it somewhat more controllable, this progress has also generated some negative consequences, including environmental chemical toxicity from the production of xenobiotic substances. He asserts that medically revolutionary scientific advancements have brought about a slew of “health conditions of non-obvious origins” like allergies, asthma, fibromyalgia, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, and others. The author sounds more hopeful when describing the advancements made in the field of human antioxidant use and immune system defense compounds found in many organic plants, fruits, vegetables, and grains. Readers facing a diabetes diagnosis will find Lyman’s straightforward and extensive discussions on the many aspects of the disease immensely worthwhile. Chapters on the dos and don’ts of nutrition (“there’s magic in fermented foods”), vitamins, and lifestyle offer encouragement to eat with balanced nutrition in mind. The text draws from numerous research projects, statistical data, and clinical reference volumes in its balanced analysis of many common chronic ailments, but the main focus is on diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly community. Lyman’s prose is energetic throughout while remaining informative and cautiously optimistic, even if a fair amount of his analysis and health guidance becomes mired in academic medical terminology—the discussion of pharmaceuticals, for instance, may fly above the heads of lay readers. The guide is a useful reminder about the dangers of chronic disease and offers steps to try to avoid it altogether, outlining new medical testing and technology coming down the pipeline. The author clocks his biological age as 20 years younger than his chronological age and attributes that to advancements in nutritional medicine; readers should take note.
A practical, optimistic, and densely informative text aimed at preventing chronic disease.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2023
ISBN: 9798989256006
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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