An entertaining and informative investigation into growing old.
One woman's quest to halt the aging process.
In today's society, old age is equated with being "weak, sickly, sexless, boring, crabby," writes Kessler (Graduate Program, Multimedia Narrative Journalism/Univ. of Oregon; My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence, 2010, etc.). To be young, by contrast, is to be "healthy, vibrant, sexy, creative, adventurous." Wanting to forestall the effects of aging for as long as possible, the author used herself as a guinea pig to explore the myriad ways this can be done…to a certain extent. What she uncovered was possibly more than she bargained for, as she navigated plastic surgery, hormone replacement therapy, fad and extremely low-calorie diets, colonics and cleansings. By studying her own aging process at the cellular level, Kessler gained a better understanding of how she was moving through life. Her extensive research on the thousands of approaches being used to slow a natural process reveal that staying physically fit through aerobic and weight-bearing exercises, eating healthy foods and getting sufficient sleep top the list of effective anti-aging methods. Kessler uses humor to help readers digest the information and develop their own strategies to combat the inevitable physical decline of advancing age while maintaining a high quality of life. Growing older is part of the process of life, she reminds us; the goal is not looking younger, but feeling younger—to have, as she writes, "an abundance of energy—physical, intellectual, and creative…continuing to feel in the thick of things." In her view, it's all about "choosing to do something with this prolonged health span, about making use of a fit body and an agile mind."
An entertaining and informative investigation into growing old.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60961-347-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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