A pleasing mixture of oddball and solid science, perfect for fans of Mary Roach and Sam Kean.
An enthusiastic pop-science account of extreme cold, especially as it applies to humans.
Writer and neuroscientist Jaekl reminds readers that until a few centuries ago, cold was considered a mysterious entity, perhaps a fluid, inherent in living matter. Once it was explained through atomic theory (and thermometers were invented in the early 1700s), experiments began in earnest. Today, “we continue to use cold to explore the nature of our very existence; it remains instrumental in shaping our definitions of life, death, and consciousness.” Everyone, the author included, loves stories of individuals who survive after apparently freezing to death. Aware that tiny worms return to life after being frozen, scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries froze innumerable higher animals, including dogs and monkeys, but none survived. In the 20th century, researchers developed techniques to chill patients, allowing surgeons to stop circulation during a long operation without causing brain damage. This usually works, but heart-lung machines work better. Chilling also allows isolated organs to survive longer before being transplanted. Pop-science fans will especially enjoy Jaekl’s discussion of modern high-tech fascinations, including cryonics, suspended animation, and human hibernation during space travel. Cryonics involves freezing and storing a corpse, hoping that future, technologically advanced humans will develop the means to revive it. The author delivers a fascinating yet often ghastly history of early cryonics, now a mature industry, although revival remains a long shot. Readers may roll their eyes as Jaekl discusses head transplants, a procedure investigated by a few serious scientists with unimpressive results, but the author concludes with an endorsement of therapeutic hypothermia. While it is still considered experimental, the procedure is often employed as a last resort to treat strokes, asphyxia in newborns, and severe seizures and to provide neuroprotection after a cardiac arrest.
A pleasing mixture of oddball and solid science, perfect for fans of Mary Roach and Sam Kean.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-5675-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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
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