Illuminating and thought-provoking, this book elicits a new awareness of and appreciation for the skin.
A leading expert in dermatology surveys the body’s largest organ, “a beautiful mystery, cloaked in feelings, opinions and questions.”
Although it is a conduit to our exquisite sense of touch and the ability to convey emotion (among a bevy of other useful and life-sustaining functions), the skin is often overlooked. “Skin is the Swiss Army knife of the organs,” writes Lyman, a doctor and a recipient of the 2017 Wilfred Thesiger Travel Writing Award, “possessing a variety of functions unmatched by any other, from survival to social communication.” To research this intimate story, the author journeyed across the globe and through history. More than just a collection of interesting case studies and fun facts—though it is that, too—this book spans a range of fields in basic science and social science in its depiction of the skin’s many roles. Drawing on his extensive clinical experience, Lyman explains the critical functions of the skin as a barrier and protector, a host for the microbiome, and a signaler of disease. He also broaches subjects as diverse as psoriasis, aging, race, and tattoos in his nuanced exploration of the profound interconnectedness of skin and self. These discussions of the mind-body connection are some of the most insightful elements of the narrative. Looking ahead, Lyman describes some of the skin’s potential for life-altering therapies as researchers manipulate stem cells and genes to treat injury and disease with more effectiveness than ever before. Throughout this wide-ranging narrative, the author’s writing is clear and not overly technical, and he excels in relating even the most esoteric subjects to a shared human experience. The 17-page glossary at the end is particularly helpful for readers not well versed in biology and other sciences.
Illuminating and thought-provoking, this book elicits a new awareness of and appreciation for the skin.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2940-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
The former president (Jankowski) and senior vice president (Fuchs) of CBS consider television's future and find the corporate networks in great shape despite cable TV's rise. The authors argue that the networks possess inherent strengths that will keep them powerful for many years to come. These include: tremendous concentrations of money, talent, and experience with long-established methods of creating popular entertainment; alliances with affiliates that pool news and other resources; and enormous audiences that will continue to lure advertisers. The virtues of the network concept explain Rupert Murdoch's recent success in building Fox and Ted Turner's attempted takeover of CBS, which occurred even as the media was sounding the networks' death knell. Meanwhile, a growing number of cable channels and emerging alternatives, though hobbled by a scarcity of money and talent, must fight for ever tinier slices of the viewer pie. This argument may be seen as self-serving, given the authors' backgrounds, and much of the rest of the book is little more than an apologia for TV. Sections on violence fail to consider important evidence of links between television and real-world violence. Other arguments- -that Americans want lowest common denominator entertainment, and that TV can't provide more balanced electoral coverage—also fail to persuade. But there's a strong dose of common sense in the authors' skepticism about the threat posed by cable and by developments like high-definition television, pay-per-view, and home shopping. The book also offers a solid overview of how networks function, of government regulation of TV, and of public television. Anyone betting heavily on the ``information superhighway'' should consider this bottom-line view. Take the rest with a grain of salt.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-507487-4
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Markoff, Levy, Lanier et al. will want to have a look at this intriguing portrait of coding and coders.
Of computer technology and its discontents.
Computers can do all kinds of cool things. The reason they can, writes tech journalist Thompson (Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, 2013), is that a coder has gotten to the problem. “Programmers spend their days trying to get computers to do new things,” he writes, “so they’re often very good at understanding the crazy what-ifs that computers make possible.” Some of those things, of course, have proven noxious: Facebook allows you to keep in touch with high school friends but at the expense of spying on your every online movement. Yet they’re kind of comprehensible, since they’re based on language: Coding problems are problems of words and thoughts and not numbers alone. Thompson looks at some of the stalwarts and heroes of the coding world, many of them not well-known—Ruchi Sanghvi, for example, who worked at Facebook and Dropbox before starting a sort of think tank “aimed at convincing members to pick a truly new, weird area to examine.” If you want weird these days, you get into artificial intelligence, of which the author has a qualified view. Humans may be displaced by machines, but the vaunted singularity probably won’t happen anytime soon. Probably. Thompson is an enthusiast and a learned scholar alike: He reckons that BASIC is one of the great inventions of history, being one of the ways “for teenagers to grasp, in such visceral and palpable ways, the fabric of infinity.” Though big tech is in the ascendant, he writes, there’s a growing number of young programmers who are attuned to the ethical issues surrounding what they do, demanding, for instance, that Microsoft not provide software to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Those coders, writes Thompson, are “the one group of people VCs and CEOs cannot afford to entirely ignore,” making them the heroes of the piece in more ways than one.
Fans of Markoff, Levy, Lanier et al. will want to have a look at this intriguing portrait of coding and coders.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2056-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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