The book’s conclusions about what to eat and drink are common sense, but the journey Le takes to get us there is worth the...
A biology professor traverses the globe to explore the evolution of food.
In this accessible debut, Le offers a nimble hybrid that is equal parts travel memoir and informed speculation about the biology of human nutrition. The author, with roots in Vietnam and Canada, also explores how different cultures approach food in support of his thesis that straying from one’s ancestral diets is a leading cause of modern disease. It’s a surprisingly cleareyed approach that demonstrates Le’s awareness of trendy diets like the paleo approach while also allowing him to dig into the science behind the effects that eating has on our lives. Starting off in Vietnam to explore the now-exotic inclusion of insects in one’s diet, the author traveled the world to explore the history of meat, fish, fruits, and starches in far-flung locales. It’s not always pretty—the chapter “A Truce Among Thieves” delves uncomfortably into the weird world of parasites and the drawbacks of modern hygiene on our digestive and immune systems. In an interesting diversion for what is nominally a scientific inquiry, Le doesn’t confine what he learns to a restrictive definition for health, as he notes in his chapter on meat. “In other words, the robustness of meat-eaters and the long lives of meat-abstainers are two sides of the same biological coin,” he writes. “It all depends on how you define healthy. Does healthy mean being in a great mood and being fertile and stronger at a younger age, or does healthy mean delaying cancer for a couple of years and hanging out with your great-grandchildren?” This line of inquiry continues in the book’s penultimate chapter, “The Future of Food,” in which Le chronicles his discussions with proponents of different diets and lifestyles, none of whom can agree on a best approach.
The book’s conclusions about what to eat and drink are common sense, but the journey Le takes to get us there is worth the cover price.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-05041-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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
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