An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.
An examination of the link between soil health and human health.
In this follow-up to The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, Montgomery and Biklé explain that we are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition. “Far too many of us remain poorly nourished despite eating more than enough food,” they write, noting the primary causes involve conventional farming practices. The authors explain the ways that these methods, including tillage and use of commercial fertilizers, disrupt the necessary, healthy symbiosis between plants and the soil. “We traded away quality in pursuit of quantity as modernized farming chased higher yields,” they write, “overlooking a farmer’s natural allies in the soil.” Alternatively, they contend, regenerative farming practices build organic matter and help maintain the fertility of the soil over a longer period of time. As in their previous book, Montgomery and Biklé offer highly readable prose, extensive research, and convincing evidence, including pertinent information on farms that have successfully implemented regenerative practices. They also share test results from gathered soil and crop samples indicating healthier soil and higher nutrient density. “Farming systems that create and maintain high levels of soil organic matter work like a savings account,” they write, “storing nutrients from one growing season to the next for the use of subsequent crops.” Another difference the authors witnessed between conventional and regenerative farming techniques is the no-till method’s greater capacity for holding water and preventing soil erosion. They take readers on a fascinating tour of a wheat mill in Washington state that bred wheat for flavor while utilizing organic techniques and point to a study that shows how wheat loses almost three-quarters of its vitamins and minerals when milled into white flour. Further, the authors explore the health benefits of consuming a diet rich in nutrients, particularly phytochemicals, from fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, which include reduced risks of dental problems, birth defects, and infectious and chronic diseases.
An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00453-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
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