Vigorous, accessible advocacy for nutritional therapy and a possible method to achieve optimal health outcomes.
A guide touts the controversial medical benefits of bovine colostrum.
In this book’s opening statement, Wyatt asserts that modern medicine is due for some fundamental changes in the way it’s taught and practiced in America. He writes that the misuse and overuse of medications lead to drug abuse and that a “return to basics and common sense” is very much in order. The author believes in the power of the “living, breathing pharmaceutical factory” known as the cow to deliver the lifesaving antibacterial and antiviral properties found in bovine colostrum, a unique, bioactive dairy secretion from the animal’s udders during the first few days after giving birth. Throughout his narrative, Wyatt references his wife, Kaye, who suffered from immune dysfunction for most of her life as a result of biological imbalances and chronic immunodeficiency. In a series of intriguing chapters discussing colostrum’s ancient history as an Egyptian “elixir of metamorphosis” and statistical data and clinical trials that demonstrate its anti-inflammatory, regenerative, and microbiome rebalancing properties, Wyatt explores how passive immunity can be obtained from nutrients and antibodies found in the secretion. He also details the arduous process of bringing colostrum in some form to the retail market. First introduced to its purported benefits by a colleague, the author vividly describes the dramatic effects the supplement had once his wife began ingesting it and how both were enchanted by this unorthodox remedy. The book chronicles Wyatt’s inspired, yearslong determination to heal his wife with colostrum. He considers himself and Kaye to be “pioneers of colostrum”; they established a nonprofit research organization on its behalf. Despite Kaye’s death, the author continues to promote what he claims is a key factor in human immune system resiliency. A military veteran, son of an herbalist, and grandson of an Idaho cattle rancher, Wyatt has no medical training or clinical experience. But the author’s thorough, clinically supported research and passionate treatment of what he calls an “ancient health remedy” will snag readers’ attention from the first page. With a section of informative guides, lists of bioactive components, and even recipes using powdered colostrum, his book will certainly inspire interest in further research by readers inclined to know more about this radical dietary supplement.
Vigorous, accessible advocacy for nutritional therapy and a possible method to achieve optimal health outcomes.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-736322-1-9
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Vibrant Life Institute
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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