A must-read book for diabetics, but doctors will also learn a lot.
The author of The Case Against Sugar and Why We Get Fat returns with an investigation of diabetes.
Taubes, a three-time winner of the Science in Society Journalism Award, explains that insulin allows cells to use sugars (i.e., carbohydrates) for energy. Diabetes results when insulin loses this ability. In Type 1 diabetes, usually beginning in childhood, the body produces little or no insulin. Type 2, which occurs later in life, is associated with obesity, and weight control is the best treatment. Until the discovery of insulin in 1921, a low-carbohydrate, low-calorie diet prolonged lives. The use of insulin seemed to work miracles; patients rose from significant illness and resumed normal lives. Doctors continued to prescribe the same “diabetic” diet, but they quickly learned that patients rarely followed it. Doctors fumed but accepted reality and decided to “cover” the increased carbohydrates and calories with insulin and other drugs. That remains the standard treatment today. However, by the 1930s, even well-controlled diabetics were developing heart disease, kidney failure, strokes, blindness, blocked arteries, and other maladies. Decades later, we are experiencing an obesity epidemic, a 600% increase in diabetes (between the early 1960s and 2015), an outpouring of drugs meant to normalize blood sugar, and numerous studies to determine if this could prevent these complications. The author also examines “the demonization of fat.” Faced with skyrocketing heart attacks in the general population, experts condemned America’s typical high-cholesterol, high-fat diet. In 1971, the American Diabetic Association “began prescribing carbohydrate-rich/low-fat diets for diabetic patients largely because this is what the American Heart Association was suggesting for effectively all Americans.” Taubes is blunt: “They were wrong.” Although the ADA has softened its condemnation of fats, which diabetics can metabolize, it continues to encourage carbohydrates, which they can’t without pharmaceutical help.
A must-read book for diabetics, but doctors will also learn a lot.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780525520085
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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