A comprehensive guide focuses on physical injury and recovery.
Everyone gets hurt, Stone writes bluntly at the beginning of his book, and it’s possible to come back from an injury faster and fitter than ever. But to accomplish this, the injured “need information on how to do so, what can help them, and how they can motivate themselves,” he writes. “They need to recognize the recovery process as long, entwined with their habits and mindset, and affected by a large variety of factors.” For years, the author, a physician, has built a practice giving this help to everybody from professional athletes to older patients dealing with issues like arthritis. This manual is the distillation of all that he’s learned about both the physical and psychological dimensions of injuries. He thus mixes a lot of practical advice—about things like posture, nutrition, and exercise—with broader philosophical observations about the active lifestyle, urging his readers to attend to the little problems so as to head off the larger ones. Ignore those minor difficulties, he asserts, and issues will accumulate: “Pay attention, and you can live well until the day you die.” Stone’s writing displays a light, very engaging tone that’s partial to both attractive idealism and puckish humor (when advocating at least 30 minutes of sunlight exposure every day, for instance, he recommends skinny-dipping). And he wards off accusations that he’s enabling irresponsible thrill-seekers with neat bravado: “To live without any risk entirely is both impossible and foolish.” His counsel on everything from skiing to rock climbing is both informed and encouraging to readers of all ages. And the helpful tips are all delivered with a calm, confident optimism that will be uplifting, particularly to readers who think they may never bounce back from their latest injuries.
An upbeat, useful, and wide-ranging look at recovering from injuries—and preventing them.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2676-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: HEALTH & FITNESS | SELF-HELP
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A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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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
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HEALTH & FITNESS
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