An entertaining and informative investigation into growing old.
One woman's quest to halt the aging process.
In today's society, old age is equated with being "weak, sickly, sexless, boring, crabby," writes Kessler (Graduate Program, Multimedia Narrative Journalism/Univ. of Oregon; My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence, 2010, etc.). To be young, by contrast, is to be "healthy, vibrant, sexy, creative, adventurous." Wanting to forestall the effects of aging for as long as possible, the author used herself as a guinea pig to explore the myriad ways this can be done…to a certain extent. What she uncovered was possibly more than she bargained for, as she navigated plastic surgery, hormone replacement therapy, fad and extremely low-calorie diets, colonics and cleansings. By studying her own aging process at the cellular level, Kessler gained a better understanding of how she was moving through life. Her extensive research on the thousands of approaches being used to slow a natural process reveal that staying physically fit through aerobic and weight-bearing exercises, eating healthy foods and getting sufficient sleep top the list of effective anti-aging methods. Kessler uses humor to help readers digest the information and develop their own strategies to combat the inevitable physical decline of advancing age while maintaining a high quality of life. Growing older is part of the process of life, she reminds us; the goal is not looking younger, but feeling younger—to have, as she writes, "an abundance of energy—physical, intellectual, and creative…continuing to feel in the thick of things." In her view, it's all about "choosing to do something with this prolonged health span, about making use of a fit body and an agile mind."
An entertaining and informative investigation into growing old.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60961-347-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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