Consumer friendly, pertinent, up-to-date and, for the most part, delivered in an easy-to-digest format.
Well written and scrupulously researched, this breezy guide lobbies for an all-encompassing approach to improving one’s lifestyle.
Rath, author of business and personal productivity books (Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, 2010, etc.), turns his attention to personal health. The author’s approach is holistic: He weaves together the importance of eating well, exercising regularly and getting quality sleep, promoting this combination as the foundation for a healthier life. Rath covers each area, but the emphasis is on making smarter food choices. Rath doles out blunt advice: “It turns out, the belief that you can eat anything in moderation is dead wrong. The quality of what you eat matters far more than the overall quantity.” He suggests that readers drastically reduce their intake of carbohydrates: “Set a goal of eating foods that have a ratio of one gram of carbs for every one gram of proteins.” He sternly warns against sugar: “Sugar is a toxin.…It is now clear that if you lower your sugar intake, you reduce the odds of cancer.” To his credit, Rath meticulously documents statements that might otherwise appear to be unsubstantiated opinions; in fact, the text includes 370 annotations. In place of the traditional exercise plan, Rath offers a more psychological approach, exhorting the reader to make movement a daily habit. Likewise, when it comes to sleep, he doesn’t deliver a specific step-by-step improvement formula as much as general yet helpful advice. One potential drawback of the author’s approach: The author integrates all three elements (“Eat Move Sleep”) into almost every chapter instead of devoting a separate section to each. This blended structure occasionally causes needless repetition. Some readers may also have trouble navigating the melded messages. But Rath’s “30-Day Guide” at the end of the book—a plan that summarizes the content—is clear and actionable.
Consumer friendly, pertinent, up-to-date and, for the most part, delivered in an easy-to-digest format.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-939714-00-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Missionday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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