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 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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