An offbeat but deeply researched look at the negative effects of recreational weed use.
A debut nonfiction book warns against the underreported health risks of marijuana use.
One of the successes of the weed legalization movement has been to persuade the public that marijuana is not the boogeyman that decades of anti-drug campaigns have made it out to be. But weed activists have been so successful that the documented health risks associated with recreational marijuana use are not widely known or discussed. “There is growing evidence that because weed is being legalized, people think that marijuana is safe for everyone,” writes Becker in his introduction. “This is simply not true. If you only get your information from the internet, you are getting a mashup of myths, facts, self-promotion, confirmation bias, opinion, and marketing.” With this book, the author seeks to advise consumers (particularly young ones) on the current state of medical research regarding the potentially harmful side effects that marijuana use can cause. He walks readers through the wealth of scientific information already available, demonstrating the ways that marijuana can have deleterious effects on the brain, mental health conditions, pregnancy, the cardiovascular system, and other parts of the body. He also discusses the negative societal impacts of recreational weed use, including on educational achievement, employment, and car accidents. Becker’s prose does not channel the stereotypical stoner suggested by the title, though it is informal and idiosyncratic: “The human brain is generally thought to be the most complex organ in the human body. Dolphins and elephants also have complex brains and, in fact, have bigger brains than we do, so don’t go around being all superior and such.” He lays out his politics early in the volume—he supports decriminalization and medicalization, but not “Budweiser-ization”—and he meticulously cites his sources. (The reference notes themselves number 95 pages.) The book includes some delightfully trippy illustrations by Hopkins, like a fetus inside a bong. The work is more serious and less scolding than the title implies, though it is perhaps an unlikely vehicle for reaching the young consumers the author hopes to save.
An offbeat but deeply researched look at the negative effects of recreational weed use.Pub Date: March 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73675-210-4
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
PERSPECTIVES
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