A fine overview of an essential organ.
By definition, the heart is an organ that receives fluid containing oxygen and nutrients from the body and then pumps it back out. Tiny, one-celled organisms—and some not so tiny (flatworms, corals, jellyfish)—don’t need one; they acquire these necessities by simple diffusion from the outside. More than 500 million years ago, writes Schutt, who is also a research associate in residence at the American Museum of Natural History, muscles evolved, forming the earliest circulatory system that moved fluids around. Hearts evolved later. The heart allows animals to grow large and move fast, but it isn’t essential. Insects don’t have one, but they don’t grow large. Although most readers give priority to their own heart, the author waits until the book’s halfway point to take it up. Nonetheless, few will object to his detours, including the especially enjoyable sections on the horseshoe crab and the blue whale. Ten chapters on the human heart deliver a scattershot but satisfying mixture of history, biology, and high-tech medicine. We are aware of our heart, perhaps more than other organs, so common sense convinced people throughout history that it was the seat of consciousness and personality. The rise of scientific research led to more accurate information, but it was a bumpy process, as revealed by Schutt’s informative and gruesome history of transfusions and transplantation. This is not a self-help book, but readers will learn details of common heart diseases and their treatments. Schutt peppers his text with jokes, asides, and cute footnotes, but tolerant readers will learn a great deal. Wynne’s clean, black-and-white line drawings, especially the diagrams of complex biological systems, provide a helpful visual accompaniment to the text.
A fine overview of an essential organ.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61620-893-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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