Gifford skillfully navigates the many strands of aging research to create an entertaining narrative of the perils of getting...
Examination of the science behind humanity’s obsession with aging and staving off death.
The oldest recorded person was Madame Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. She was not exactly an exemplar of good health either; she smoked until she was 117. By contrast, the oldest clam was 507. Can humans learn something about aging from clams? Is it possible to plan for a long life? Those are only some of the questions Outside correspondent Gifford (Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer, 2007) tackles in his exploration of not only the health industry’s advancements—e.g., controversial hormone therapies—to prolong life expectancy and reduce the effects of aging, but also the cultural perspectives that underscore the evolutionary drive to live as long and comfortably as possible. The author points out the underlying contradiction that while life expectancy has climbed significantly in recent years, the overall health of the population is getting worse. This conundrum cannot easily be answered, but the ethical quandaries related to these medical advances lead to an alternative argument that there is simply no limit to human life. One particularly fringe idea is parabiosis, or surgically pairing a young body to an old one, thereby “distributing” the youth. Gifford chronicles other seemingly sci-fi techniques that are striving for legitimacy and expertly explains complex science in layman’s terms. He also analyzes studies of Alzheimer’s and other disorders and diseases that cause significant cognitive decline. Perplexing still is the fact that people age differently, and there is no predictor why some people live to be 100 in great physical and mental health while others suffer severe debilities at relatively younger ages. The only reasonable prescription for living a long and healthy life is, somewhat anticlimactically, simply exercising and eating right.
Gifford skillfully navigates the many strands of aging research to create an entertaining narrative of the perils of getting old.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2744-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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