A solid resource on handling the ups and downs of male genital health.
A practical, meaty manual for everyman’s manhood—and the women (and men) who love them.
During the last few decades of author Danoff’s 30 years as a practicing urologist, he began to notice the distressing trend of “penis weakness,” which he describes as the general unawareness of a male’s true phallic potential. The author expands on recommendations to assuage this condition found in his first handbook (Superpotency: How to Get It, Use It, and Maintain It for a Lifetime, 1993), aiming to unlock the secrets to maximizing male sexual ability. Danoff’s approach, however, isn’t always balanced. He does little justice to the male species by compartmentalizing them as defenseless slaves to their sexuality (“When ‘King Penis’ issues a command, a man has little power to disobey”), yet he redeems himself when more appropriately focusing on pertinent issues like managing functional impairments (yes, size matters), sexually transmitted diseases, prostate problems, potency (“anxiety in any shape or form is the worst enemy of the penis”) and andropause (male menopause). Having treated HIV patients in his practice, Danoff reiterates the importance of being smart, responsible adults in this “sexually dangerous” age; however, his assertion that anal intercourse with a condom is still “highly risky” will seem unnecessarily cautionary to anyone knowledgeable in safer-sex practices. Many sections are prefaced with basic anatomical information, which make the book ideal for younger readers who may need an accessible crash course in male sexuality. Also helpful are tips on overcoming the harmful mindsets and negativity responsible for a penis “falling down on the job” and a uniformly informative “Frequently Asked Questions” chapter. Entertaining and edifying (if a bit repetitive), Danoff’s headstrong approach forms a positive step toward understanding and trumping the conundrums of phallicism.
A solid resource on handling the ups and downs of male genital health.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9831998-3-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Del Monaco Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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
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
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