A hard-hitting look at the perils of carbohydrates and obesity.
A series of articles, this debut book delivers an account of the dangers of carbohydrate consumption—especially for average eaters who rely on grains and sugars to supply the bulk of their daily diets.
Knight’s theory demonstrates a direct link between carbohydrate consumption and deadly ailments such as cancer and diabetes, along with a host of other diseases like arthritis, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. From the beginning, the author declares sugar as dangerous as nicotine or heroin. Having realized that he could mend previous brain damage and grow new brain cells after a car accident by eliminating grains and all sugars from his diet, the author adamantly promotes a regimen as free of sugars as possible. From there, he explains the impact of sugar consumption on many bodily processes, such as the glycation of cholesterol, which leads to modern illnesses. He also promotes consumption of healthy fats: “Fats won’t glycate other fats…. If, it’s the glycation of cholesterol that leads to most illness and diseases, and building up Nrf2 in your brain can help protect you from that glycation, why wouldn’t you want to build it up?” While scientific in content, the book is also conversational, and written in the first person. For example, the author recounts a story about a friend who decided to have gastric bypass surgery, and argues that this is only a prescription for more future health issues. First, he points out that the bypass patient still faces carbohydrate addiction and has not solved the root of the problem. Next, he points out the dangers of removing part of the stomach: “Your stomach…produces one of the most important hormones for your health, Ghrelin. If you take away the source of this hormone, you’re taking away future health.” While the message is not delivered softly, it is backed with analysis, evidence from other titles, and statistical data regarding the bodily effects of glucose and carbohydrates. Knight’s message is not a mainstream call to limit carbs: It is a full-on attack on carbohydrates as a danger to human health. “Excessive Carbohydrate Consumption is responsible for as much as 42% of all deaths, a minimum of 24 million deaths each year,” the author insists. Readers intrigued by the highly polarized debate between low-carb dieting and carbohydrate-based diets should enjoy this adamant stance. Yet readers searching for a more balanced approach, or those seeking expert medical knowledge, may opt for other titles in the diet and nutrition genre.
A hard-hitting look at the perils of carbohydrates and obesity.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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