An exuberant, health-positive guide for readers eager to reform their eating habits.
Practical dietary advice from a medical doctor—with inspiration from Einstein.
Retired Florida physician Beecham’s debut, the inaugural volume in his four-part LivingLIFE series, employs a unique approach to healthy eating through smarter food selections. Beecham notes that he, in retirement, was 65 pounds overweight from a cycle of “eating protein bars, drinking diet soda,” and suffering from food allergies. Devising an unconventional new methodology to a smart diet, Beecham explored the universal wisdom of Albert Einstein to address the age-old problem of unhealthy eating habits. A crisp, brightly hued palette and enticing photographs enhance Beecham’s message, which begins with rational, common-sense declarations about how we live and the limitations that often govern our ability to change. Breaking free from these limitations, he writes, will allow consumers to make better food choices. The book utilizes Einstein’s way of “looking into nature” to explain misleading claims about cholesterol, the “lectin” toxicity of edible grains, and ways sugary items and bread can sabotage the appetite. Examining the eating habits of the healthiest populations, like those on the Pacific Islands, he writes, reveals new directions to investigate, such as eliminating inflammation-inducing wheat products and nightshade berries, like tomatoes, okra, peppers, and eggplant. Instead, vegetables such as Asian sweet potatoes are more beneficial to incorporate into one’s diet, Beecham advises. He also offers more rudimentary information on how the body stores energy, fat, proteins, and omega fats. The author correlates Einstein’s relativity theory to several “thought experiments” about how advertising and popular food choices influence consumption patterns. Sections detailing the healthy habits of Kitava Island inhabitants in the Pacific and probiotics translate as more relatable than promoting a dairy-free diet with homemade mashed banana and coconut oil ice cream. Though nothing particularly revolutionary or new is presented here, Beecham provides doable guidelines for living more healthfully through improved dietary alternatives.
An exuberant, health-positive guide for readers eager to reform their eating habits.Pub Date: March 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980365-83-9
Page Count: 124
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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