Persuasive arguments backed by scientific research that clearly demonstrate the benefits of breast-feeding for as long as...
A new analysis of the controversy surrounding women breast-feeding their children.
For millennia, breast-feeding has been the primary method of feeding children, and both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization recommend six months of “exclusive breastfeeding (no additional foods or fluids, not even water)…for optimal growth, development, and health.” Environmental journalist Grayson provides abundant interesting research to show the evolution of breast-feeding through the centuries to the present day. She interviews women from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, including Orthodox Jews and mothers in Taiwan, France, and Mongolia, and she adds her own experiences with breast-feeding her two daughters to show how different cultures view this method of feeding. Since there are abundant health advantages, the milk is readily available, and it’s free, the author wondered why so many women don’t breast-feed. She clearly explains how many women gradually shifted from this ready-made way to feed children to using animal milk, wet nurses, and then formula as alternatives, the pros and cons, and the health consequences for children and mothers as a result. She discusses the birth of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and the rise in the number of lactation consultants and groups advocating for breast-feeding. The author also examines the difficulty that women who work face when they need to pump milk and are not provided with clean, private spaces to do so, and she offers suggestions on how this might change. She delves into the sexual overtones that many cultures have laid on the breast that influence and affect how men, in particular, view breast-feeding, especially when a child has reached a certain age. For women who breast-feed, Grayson’s research offers ample reasons why they should continue for as long as possible; for those women trying to choose between breastfeeding or formula, the author will help sway them toward the breast.
Persuasive arguments backed by scientific research that clearly demonstrate the benefits of breast-feeding for as long as possible.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-242339-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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
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