Arguable throughout, but with plenty of helpful advice that bears discussion.
A physician decries a food system that privileges profit over health.
By Hyman’s account, many of the nation’s ills, shared in other “developed” nations if perhaps less starkly, “all lead back to our forks”: an obesity epidemic, a rapidly rising rate of preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, environmental destruction, a teetering economy. These visit our forks courtesy of the megacorporations that dominate food production and dish out ultraprocessed, sugary, chemically laden goods that “don’t even meet the definition of ‘food.’” In this revised and expanded edition of his 2020 book, Hyman’s narrative is heavy on numbers: 93.2 percent of Americans are “metabolically unhealthy”; in the past 40-odd years, every state in the union has posted ever-higher obesity rates, with some coming in at 40 percent and “most others landing over 30 percent”; and, particularly tellingly, “most of our modern industrial food comes from just twelve plant varieties and five animal species.” Hyman offers a corrective program that he considers nonpartisan, yet readers will discern a libertarian streak: He suggests that soda be exempted from purchase with SNAP benefits and bemoans the fact that the federal government pays almost 40 percent of direct health care costs, “funded by you, the taxpayer.” Moreover, he invokes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at several points with praise, and he deplores “the merciless assassination of legendary free thinker Charlie Kirk.” For all that, some of his “fixes” seem incontestable, including the position that farmers and food workers should be paid a living wage, that field workers (mostly migrants, once upon a time) should be granted “time to rest to prevent exhaustion and heat stroke,” and that Congress should fund “programs that help farmers grow more fruits and vegetables, or actual food.”
Arguable throughout, but with plenty of helpful advice that bears discussion.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780316598637
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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