A book that should have wide appeal, not only to those fighting the battle of the bulge.
Americans spend more money on the war against fat than the war against terror. As Tara writes, “we are indeed a nation at war with a body part.”
After the birth of her second child, the author, who has a doctorate in biochemistry and has served as a consultant for major biotech companies, struggled to hold her weight in check with a combination of diet and exercise in order to pass what she describes as the “skinny jeans” test. From her adolescence, dieting and exercise had become an obsession but not a solution, and Tara was on a roller coaster, losing extra pounds on a starvation diet and then gaining them back just by eating dinner. Her professional training fueled her determination to find out why she gained weight while her friends, who ate more and exercised less, remained thin. Examining a variety of scientific studies, she made a surprising discovery. Experiments revealed what she calls “the obesity paradox,” which showed how fat plays an important part in maintaining our overall health. While obesity is a contributing factor to heart disease, the survival rate after heart failure is better for people with “a higher body mass index and higher fat.” Tara also discovered new reports suggesting the possibility that obesity is the result of a viral infection. Ongoing research has identified people with an antibody to the virus who gained significantly greater body mass over a 10-year period. Researchers have also found that fat stores stem cells, which play a vital role in replacing bone, muscle, and cartilage in the body. For Tara, this provides a convincing explanation of why there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of maintaining a healthy weight. The author ably combines an accessible explanation of how the body’s metabolism works with a clear survey of the latest research on obesity.
A book that should have wide appeal, not only to those fighting the battle of the bulge.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-24483-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Is Europe ripe for the plucking? Perhaps. Sheehan offers a worthy contribution to geopolitics.
Europeans and Americans inhabit different planets—certainly, Sheehan (History/Stanford Univ.) writes, when it comes to attitudes toward war.
Sheehan’s solid book addresses an interesting phenomenon: How is it that Europe, breeding ground for catastrophic wars, has adopted the view that the military is a largely unnecessary evil? One factor, the author suggests, is the changing view of the nation-state. Whereas wars created and reinforced nations, and universal military service was once seen as a means for inculcating the ideals of the state, ever since 1945 supranational organizations, such as the UN and World Court, have assumed some of the state’s old duties. Britain had already proved that it was possible to be an only modestly militaristic state and yet control a vast empire. Now, with the postwar loss of empires around the world, Europe’s nations no longer needed great armies. (Besides—though Sheehan does not address it at any length—much of the postwar defense tab was being paid by the United States, eager to contain the Soviet Union via NATO, whose mission, a British diplomat remarked, was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”) However Europe arrived at its new view of force, wars fought on the continent have been remarkably well-contained. As Sheehan observes, a war in the Balkans would once have touched off a conflagration across the continent, but the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were local and, once NATO got involved, easily suppressed. Any increase in militarism seems unlikely, given the widespread renunciation of America’s invasion of Iraq, though the balance may be thrown off once militarized Turkey joins the European Union. Sheehan warns that it will “not be an easy matter to absorb this kind of state into Europe’s resolutely civilian politics and culture.”
Is Europe ripe for the plucking? Perhaps. Sheehan offers a worthy contribution to geopolitics.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-35396-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
Readers who enjoy a vicarious look at genius will find plenty of food for thought in Brian's conversations with some of the top scientists of our era. Brian (The True Gen, 1988, etc.) is an excellent interviewer, and he has managed to corral an impressive herd of thinkers: Linus Pauling, Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac, and a number of others, in fields ranging from astrophysics to anthropology. Each interview begins with a brief biography of the scientist. Brian has a good sense of organization, and he intersperses the listing of facts with retrospective comments by the subject. Then he goes into the actual interviewmost of them were conducted by telephoneand the book gets down to serious business. We are treated to Pauling's comments about vitamin C as a possible cure for cancer and about his left-wing politics; personal reminiscences of the atom bomb program by several of the men who made it work; and Ashley Montagu's explanation of why the sex drive is not innate. Brian has a few pet questions he asks all the interview subjects, mostly on religion, reincarnation, life after death, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and personal experiences with psychic phenomena. Naturally, each of the scientists has a different set of answers; the majority are skeptics, although several declare some sort of religious faith. (Of course, none of the scientists has any more direct pipeline to this sort of Truth than the rest of us.) The book is generally well documented, although it would be interesting to know exactly when each of the interviews was conducted; several clearly took place over a decade ago, and a few subjects were interviewed more than once. Well written, provocative, and full of interesting portraits of the leading thinkers of our age. (34 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1995
ISBN: 0-306-45089-5
Page Count: 395
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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