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THE NATURE FIX

Name: THE NATURE FIX
Author: Florence Williams
ISBN: 978-0-393-24271-3

WHY NATURE MAKES US HAPPIER, HEALTHIER, AND MORE CREATIVE

by Florence Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2017

A thoughtful, refreshing book with a simple but powerful message: “Go outside, often, sometimes in wild places. Bring...

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A journalist explores the relationship between nature and human well-being.

In this upbeat, brightly conversational account, Outside contributing editor Williams (Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, 2012) travels widely to track down the best science behind “our deep, cranial connection to natural landscapes.” Nature restores us, making us “healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other,” she writes, echoing the thinking of writers over the centuries, most recently biologist E.O. Wilson, whose concept of biophilia posits a bond between humans and nature, and Richard Louv, who wrote the important Last Child in the Woods (2008). Williams draws on interviews with psychologists, neuroscientists, and others, as well as experiences on wilderness field trips, in search of credible evidence of nature’s benefits. Her stories of scientific findings are fascinating: how leisurely forest walks have led to decreases in cortisol levels in one study and, in another, to increases in immune-boosting killer T cells in women with breast cancer after two weeks in a forest. In the stress-ridden, rapidly urbanizing Asian nations, the author encountered, with skepticism, “healing forests,” whose smells are said to alleviate disease; the author notes, “the power of belief is hard to overestimate.” In outdoor and nature programs in Finland, Scotland, and elsewhere, she finds much encouraging anecdotal evidence of nature’s benefits. Former military members suffering from PTSD describe the therapeutic effects of a wilderness trip along the Salmon River; adolescents with learning disabilities appear to benefit from outdoor activities. Many scientists are convinced of such benefits, but their studies, however suggestive, have been small, and they leave unresolved the importance of other factors (exercise, social contact, etc.). “These are difficult things to quantify by science,” says one researcher of “the power and mystery of the great outdoors.” Nonetheless, there is no doubt that nature is good for us, concludes Williams.

A thoughtful, refreshing book with a simple but powerful message: “Go outside, often, sometimes in wild places. Bring friends or not. Breathe.”

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-393-24271-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
HEARTBREAK
by Florence Williams

- BOOK REVIEW
BREASTS
by Florence Williams

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SUFFERING MADE REAL

AMERICAN SCIENCE AND THE SURVIVORS AT HIROSHIMA

by M. Susan Lindee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 1994

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This account of how US authorities studied the surviving victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ought to be of wide interest, but Lindee's version of the story will not attract a general readership outside academic circles. Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, has described the atomic bomb survivors as ``people who, despite all, didn't commit suicide.'' After the war these people comprised the world's best sample by far for studies of how exposure to radiation affects individuals and their offspring. An Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was set up under the US Atomic Energy Commission, and the work of the ABCC over nearly three decades is the subject of this book. Lindee (History and Sociology of Science/Univ. of Pennsylvania) refers to the ABCC's work as ``colonial science,'' by which she means primarily that the dominant power could not carry out its work without the cooperation of its defeated subjects. How was the organization and work of the commission affected by this dilemma? Did any kind of systematic bias creep into the many scientific papers published under its auspices? These are the kinds of questions that interest Lindee, but the language in which she cloaks her conclusions sometimes makes it hard to tell what they are. Take the question of why it was decided that the ABCC would not provide medical care to the survivors as it was studying them: ``I suggest that the treatment debate was a forum in which various parties explored the proper relationship of the Americans to the Japanese.'' Although this is an authoritative scholarly work, it suffers from an excess of sophistication and circumspection, so that the questions readers most want answered are not addressed squarely enough.

Pub Date: Dec. 15, 1994

ISBN: 0-226-48237-5

Page Count: 296

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994

Categories:

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DNA MYSTIQUE
by Dorothy Nelkin & M. Susan Lindee

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TIGER!

by Simon Barnes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1995

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Most of the adjectives and metaphors that initially come to mind to describe tigers seem to have originally come from them. Poetry in motion. Predatory cunning. We don't use other animal or human traits to describe tigers; we use tigers to describe the world. Or to sell cereal, hawk gasoline, or bestow on sports teams the combination of controlled ferocity and grace that William Blake called ``fearful symmetry.'' Poetry can't elevate a tiger. Being the thing itself, a tiger is already elevated. But pictures like the ones in this book are good. And facts are good, too. They ground wonderment in knowledge. How'd you like to be able to carry 50 pounds of meat in your stomach? This is just one of the facts in this companion text to a PBS installment of the In the Wild series. Barnes, who writes on wildlife for The Guardian in England, covers the lives and shrinking habitats of Siberian, Indian, Sumatran, and Indochinese tigers. He also writes about poaching and efforts to stop it. (75 color photos, 75 b&w photos)