An engaging, humorous take on a familiar topic.
No-nonsense fitness tips from a New Jersey tough guy.
Certified personal trainer Stein isn’t afraid to call it like he sees it, and his blunt how-to manual aims to get people off the couch and into the gym. The target audience is primarily the middle-aged and older—those who have found that their once-youthful and resilient physiques have been replaced with creaky knees and flabby arms and who are trying “to win the battle of the beltline bulge.” The content, however, is general enough to appeal to all adults. Mixing punchy prose, common-sense advice and funny asides, Stein divides fitness into eight components: strength, balance, power, speed, flexibility, endurance, motor coordination and stamina. He also discusses how to set up an affordable home gym, the rules of gym etiquette and fitness fashion, and what to look for in a personal trainer. In keeping with the book’s title, Stein peppers the text with references to sleeping with fishes and Michael and Sonny Corleone, exhorting readers to “never go against your fitness family”—your doctor, trainer, nutritionist and others you recruit to help you achieve fitness success. At the same time, he explains the importance of balancing cardio with strength training, why spending 10 minutes a day walking the dog isn’t adequate exercise and how to avoid overindulging when dining out. Some sections are unnecessary, however, including an entire chapter devoted to baseball trivia. While the guide doesn’t break any new ground—there’s little here that can’t be found in other fitness books—Stein’s personality comes through on every page, keeping the advice from becoming stale. Overall, his practical guidance and tough-love approach (“There is no crying allowed during exercise”) may deliver the kick in the rear that some people need to get in shape. But those looking for gentle words of encouragement and touchy-feely inspiration can fuhgeddaboudit.
An engaging, humorous take on a familiar topic.Pub Date: March 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480152038
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
