This blandly generic weight-loss guide doesn’t have enough heart to connect with readers.
The title promises a weight-loss memoir, but readers will find a flawed how-to guide instead.
At 14, Whitney Holcombe discovered she weighed 230 pounds and resolved to change. Starting by walking, she began the hard work and discipline to lose 100 pounds in a year. But after one chapter giving the basics of Holcombe’s story, this work shifts into a guide to losing weight, starting with the proverbial “wake-up call” and setting goals. Losing weight through exercise and eating healthily are addressed with some good information, including workout diagrams and primers on how to read nutrition labels. Unfortunately, Holcombe’s tone throughout the work may well put readers off; it’s an immature, “I know best” voice that evokes bossy trainers like Jillian Michaels. But there’s no empathy for readers’ struggles—her story about appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and condemning her fellow guests for choosing weight-loss surgery over exercise and portion control is but one example.
This blandly generic weight-loss guide doesn’t have enough heart to connect with readers. (weight-loss resources) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58270-409-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beyond Words/Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
A closer focus on biology than bloodshed makes this a natural companion for Tanya Lloyd Kyi’s more anthropological Seeing...
Newquist expands considerably on the premise that “[t]here is more to blood than that it’s red and kind of gross” without neglecting to keep the “kind of gross” parts in view.
Along with a suitably gore-spattered parade of Aztec and other bloodthirsty gods and blood rituals throughout history, the author takes quick looks at various kinds of blood in the animal kingdom and at vampires in modern pop culture. He also recaps the development of our understanding of blood and the circulatory system from ancient times through the scientific revolution, and thence on to modern uses for blood in medicine and research. In considerably more detail, though, he tallies blood’s individual components and the specific functions of each in keeping our bodies alive and healthy. Aside from a debatable claim that “[e]verything you put in your body ends up in your blood,” this transfusion of information offers a rewarding experience to readers whether they’re after the specific differences between blood types and other biological data or just gore’s icky lore. It's nicely enhanced by a generous array of photographs, microphotographs and artists’ renderings.
A closer focus on biology than bloodshed makes this a natural companion for Tanya Lloyd Kyi’s more anthropological Seeing Red: The True Story of Blood (2012). (bibliography, Web sites) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-31584-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
A serviceable introduction both to this CSI-related field and to the relevant human anatomy.
How does science work to identify corpses of the unknown?
Murray’s compact, textbook look at the basics of forensic anthropology provides comprehensible introductions to individually unique anatomical and physiological characteristics and to the timetable for the decay or decomposition of each. Eight “case files” are presented to provide a story to illustrate the techniques of post-mortem identification in practical contexts and to provide human interest to accompany the straightforward text. Unsurprisingly gruesome, each involves the discovery of a body (or in one, the separate limbs and severed head of a young woman) of an unknown person whose identification is challenged by decomposition. Three main chapters look at current forensic technology from the outside in—the first describes skin, hair, scars, tattoos, fingerprints and their reconstruction, while the second provides a look at how bones, teeth and implants provide structural identification. Murray describes the gold standard of identification—nuclear DNA profiling—in the last chapter with satisfyingly clear instruction in the essential features of forensic DNA. About 20 percent of the text is printed in white on a dark background, including all of the case-file narratives. File photos are used throughout to illustrate the points being made.
A serviceable introduction both to this CSI-related field and to the relevant human anatomy. (index, bibliography, sources for more information) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7613-6696-6
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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