An engaging self-help book that offers a clear road map for extending one’s life span.
Clean living improves the odds for a long life, according to this fascinating primer on the medical realities of aging.
Cortvriendt, a physician, focuses on the nutritional and lifestyle factors that affect our susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Front and center is his detailed, wonderfully lucid discussion of food, which takes readers from the basic chemistries of carbohydrates, fats and proteins and their metabolism in the body through the subtle and often strange complexities of dieting. (Excess carbohydrates are bad, but an Atkins-style ban will do much more harm than good, he writes.) He provides a skeptical take on vitamin and antioxidant supplements; vitamins A and E, he writes, have been found to actually increase cancer risks at high doses. He balances this with the seemingly miraculous assertion that eating dark chocolate protects against cancer, diabetes and other ailments; tobacco is anathema, alcohol tolerable and coffee a downright boon, he says. However, Cortvriendt advises that what we do is as important as what we ingest and that there’s no end to the benefits of exercise, which wards off hypertension, dementia and other ills. Basking in sunlight may perk you up, the author says, but it can also give you cancer or make you look old. The book also advises that seething Type A personalities should learn to relax and meditate. There are facts, figures and charts galore, but the author presents the information in simple, straightforward prose that laypeople will understand, while paying due attention to complexities; for example, he explains the pitfalls of deriving reliable conclusions from a muddle of medical statistics and offers shrewd, evenhanded assessments of the conflicting evidence surrounding medical controversies. The result is an absorbing, highly readable exposition of the science of health that yields a wealth of common-sense advice.
An engaging self-help book that offers a clear road map for extending one’s life span.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4928-7008-1
Page Count: 380
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Lorde’s big heart and fierce mind are at full strength on each page of this deeply personal and deeply political collection.
The groundbreaking Black lesbian writer and activist chronicles her experience with cancer.
In her mid-40s, Lorde (1934-1992) was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy. Through prose, poems, and selected journal entries beginning six months after the surgery, the author explores the anger, pain, and fear that her illness wrought. Her recovery was characterized by resistance and learning to love her body again. She envisioned herself as a powerful fighter while also examining the connection between her illness and her activism. “There is no room around me in which to be still,” she writes, “to examine and explore what pain is mine alone—no device to separate my struggle within from my fury at the outside world’s viciousness, the stupid brutal lack of consciousness or concern that passes for the way things are. The arrogant blindness of comfortable white women. What is this work all for? What does it matter if I ever speak again or not?” Lorde confronts other tough questions, including the role of holistic and alternative treatments and whether her cancer (and its recurrence) was preventable. She writes of eschewing “superficial spirituality” and repeatedly rejecting the use of prosthesis because it felt like “a lie” at precisely the time she was “seeking new ways of strength and trying to find the courage to tell the truth.” Forty years after its initial publication and with a new foreword by Tracy K. Smith, the collection remains a raw reckoning with illness and death as well as a challenge to the conventional expectations of women with cancer. More universally, Lorde’s rage and the clarity that follows offer us a blueprint for facing our mortality and living boldly in the time we have. This empowering compilation is heartbreaking, beautiful, and timeless.
Lorde’s big heart and fierce mind are at full strength on each page of this deeply personal and deeply political collection.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313520-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Fans will find comfort in Lawson’s dependably winning mix of shameless irreverence, wicked humor, and vulnerability.
The Bloggess is back to survey the hazards and hilarity of imperfection.
Lawson is a wanderer. Whether on her award-winning blog or in the pages of her bestselling books, she reliably takes readers to places they weren’t even aware they wanted to go—e.g., shopping for dog condoms or witnessing what appears to be a satanic ritual. Longtime fans of the author’s prose know that the destinations really aren’t the point; it’s the laugh-out-loud, tears-streaming-down-your-face journeys that make her writing so irresistible. This book is another solid collection of humorous musings on everyday life, or at least the life of a self-described “super introvert” who has a fantastic imagination and dozens of chosen spirit animals. While Furiously Happy centered on the idea of making good mental health days exceptionally good, her latest celebrates the notion that being broken is beautiful—or at least nothing to be ashamed of. “I have managed to fuck shit up in shockingly impressive ways and still be considered a fairly acceptable person,” writes Lawson, who has made something of an art form out of awkward confessionals. For example, she chronicles a mix-up at the post office that left her with a “big ol’ sack filled with a dozen small squishy penises [with] smiley faces painted on them.” It’s not all laughs, though, as the author addresses her ongoing battle with both physical and mental illness, including a trial of transcranial magnetic stimulation, a relatively new therapy for people who suffer from treatment-resistant depression. The author’s colloquial narrative style may not suit the linear-narrative crowd, but this isn’t for them. “What we really want,” she writes, “is to know we’re not alone in our terribleness….Human foibles are what make us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.” The material is fresh, but the scaffolding is the same.
Fans will find comfort in Lawson’s dependably winning mix of shameless irreverence, wicked humor, and vulnerability.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-07703-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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