Couch potatoes take warning: the experiences described in this testimonial are often tough to read about, and the...
On the heels of the paleo diet comes a new claim: taking on the physical challenges of the environment faced by our prehistoric ancestors can undo what easy calories and effortless comfort have done to our bodies—made them fat, lazy, and weak.
In his latest book, investigative journalist and anthropologist Carney (A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment, 2015, etc.) expands on his 2014 Playboy piece, “The Iceman Cometh,” in which he profiled Dutch fitness guru Wim Hof and experienced Hof’s strenuous training methods, some of which involve exposing the near-naked body to snow and icy water. At first skeptical, Carney became convinced by the changes he experienced in his own body. The narrative is filled with personal details that will engage, astonish, and even repel readers. Expanding on his unnerving close-up account, the author also examines the research being done on the role of brown adipose tissue in the body and a variety of military and sports medicine training practices. He cites the anecdotal evidence of people who have placed their faith in Hof and are convinced that his techniques have changed, if not saved, their lives—e.g., sufferers of Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. As a climax to his account, Carney describes how, stripped to the waist, he accompanied Hof on a climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak. In the epilogue, the author asserts that his experiences showed him that “exposure to cold helps reconfigure the cardiovascular system, combat autoimmune malfunctions, and is a pretty darned good method to simply lose weight.” Hof provides the book’s foreword.
Couch potatoes take warning: the experiences described in this testimonial are often tough to read about, and the conclusions, while sometimes convincing, might best be taken with a touch of skepticism.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62336-690-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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