“Perhaps the real fountain of youth emanates not from the cosmetics counter but from what’s between your ears.” Tindle makes...
A spirited appreciation of and guide to the health benefits of an upbeat outlook on life.
By now, there have been enough studies to state the obvious, even if we haven’t cracked its genetic code or calibrated its precise nature/nurture balance: Being able to find your way to the bright side of the road will bless you with a longer, happier life than any grump out there is going to enjoy (or rather, not enjoy). Tindle (Medicine/Univ. of Pittsburgh) presents the latest findings on this subject with a freshness that could sell thousands of rose-colored glasses. Yet hers is not a witless optimism but a hard-won state of awareness, achieved by fighting through sloughs of despond and touched by a bit of knowing blindness that “protects us from being paralyzed by the fear that naturally arises on facing the unfiltered gravitas of a tough scenario.” Tindle recognizes the value of an individual's outlook, with its particular personality, character traits, disposition and attitudes, but she also sharply discourages readers from pulling the optimistic wool over their eyes. Among her correctives are short, educational passages on cognitive behavioral therapy, contemplation, guided imagery and motivational interviewing. She is constantly on the hunt for outlook optimization and ever mindful of the challenging psychological gymnastics of preventive health care. "If things become unstable,” she advises pragmatically, “scanning the horizon [and] formulating a plan B" are valuable fallback positions. A questionnaire helps readers locate their "attitude latitude," a too-cute phrase for the insightful summary it provides of a respondent's basic outlook.
“Perhaps the real fountain of youth emanates not from the cosmetics counter but from what’s between your ears.” Tindle makes a warm, accessible case, though Estée Lauder may not want us to hear it.Pub Date: May 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59463-121-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hudson Street/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
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