An illuminating account of the science of life extension with a more critical eye than most.
A Nobel Prize winner in chemistry examines aging and dying.
Ramakrishnan, a molecular biologist and the author of The Gene Machine, writes that biologists don’t consider aging “inevitable.” Progress has diminished human wear and tear over the past century and doubled our longevity without increasing our maximal lifespan. No one has matched Jeanne Calment, who died 25 years ago at 122, though she was feeble, blind, and deaf during her final years. Ramakrishnan emphasizes that all living things can die, but many, including tiny hydras and some jellyfish, can regenerate completely when certain parts are chopped off. Their likelihood of dying does not increase with age, so they are considered biologically immortal. More familiar animals—giant tortoises, some sharks—age extremely slowly, and we have plenty to learn from these creatures. Ramakrishnan is a fine writer, so readers will enjoy his expert if intensely detailed overview of genetics and evolution as it applies to aging. Those who pay attention will be rewarded by his modestly optimistic conclusion about life extenders, which are familiar to health-conscious readers and heavily promoted by entrepreneurial colleagues. The author includes fascinating studies demonstrating that the front-runners—rapamycin, resveratrol, metformin, curcumin—and calorie restriction extend the lives of animals, including primates. However, having no skin in the game, the author breaks ranks with enthusiasts by recounting failed studies. He holds a low opinion of respectable colleagues who promote the elderly male billionaires who finance their startups, as well as the bizarre but flourishing cryonics industry, which freezes people immediately after death “with the idea of defrosting them when a cure for whatever ailed them has been found.” In the end, Ramakrishnan believes that vast lifespans will happen, but not in the near future.
An illuminating account of the science of life extension with a more critical eye than most.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780063113275
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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