A physician tells you everything you ever wanted to know about life extension with less nonsense than usual.
The latest in the author’s How Not To series.
Readers who agree that anti-aging books are largely “hype and lies” may perk up to learn that Greger not only proclaims that he is a scientist, but he writes like one. The author delivers a lengthy, encyclopedic account of life-extenders that explains how they work and examines research supporting them, and he is not shy about expressing skepticism. But skeptics often have a modest readership, while enthusiasts write bestsellers; Greger clearly understands this, so he leans over backward to express enthusiasm. The author begins with a discussion of proven elements that lead to longer, healthier lives, including long-lived parents, a plant-based diet, exercise, good medical care, and the money to afford quality food and medical care. After this brief introduction, Greger focuses on an extremely wide variety of nutrients, herbs, foods, spices, new and old drugs, genetic manipulation, specific diets, attitudes, and even geographical areas that published research suggests may prolong lives. Some of the world’s longest-living people include Okinawans and Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. The U.S. as a whole is 45th in the world in life expectancy. Relentlessly optimistic, Greger includes numerous life-extenders backed by a single study, which he admits is not the strongest evidence. A long middle section on how to preserve function as you age may be the most useful, despite its lack of life-extension hype. The author’s avalanche of information is genuinely educational, although an active, middle-class vegetarian probably already possesses more than 90% of what’s proven to maximize their lifespan. None of Greger’s revelations seems likely to lead to vast life extension, but this is a welcome addition to a genre that continues to grow in popularity.
A physician tells you everything you ever wanted to know about life extension with less nonsense than usual.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781250796332
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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