Thoughtful, rigorously researched, and refreshingly practical self-help advice.
Performance scientist and former elite cyclist Hewitt offers a myth-busting guide to thriving without falling victim to hustle culture.
In this self-help book, the author rejects the notions of a relentless grind and passive “quiet quitting,” instead delivering a compassionate, data-driven framework centered on rhythms of exertion and renewal. His insights draw on his own personal and professional trials, whether he’s discussing racing bikes in France or surviving cancer at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hewitt opens by asking readers to embrace shoshin, the Japanese concept of “beginner’s mind”—an attitude of open curiosity unburdened by expertise or expectation. This mindset, he writes, helped him to rebuild after “hyperoptimization” failed, and it anchors the book’s grounded tone. Each chapter explores a core pillar of sustainable performance, tackling mornings and workdays, downtime, sleep, fitness, and nutrition, and examining one’s mindset and personal growth. Hewitt dismantles trendy wellness advice, such as delaying intake of caffeine or plunging oneself into cold water, with peer-reviewed evidence and calm clarity. Such fads, he argues, often succeed not on merit but due to cognitive distortions, including confirmation bias. He encourages readers to work on understanding themselves, and to that end, he recommends identifying one’s chronotype using a simple two-question Circadian Energy Scale, then building routines aligned with one’s natural rhythms. His “Cognitive Gears” model reimagines mental effort as akin to athletic training, aiming to help readers shift between intensity, focus, and recovery. His use of “expected value” calculations, a concept borrowed from the field of economics, recommends making lifestyle decisions by weighing benefits, risks, and implementation costs. Hewitt’s voice is precise but never preachy, and he offers reflection prompts, infographics, and planning tools that make complex science actionable. He blends aspects of neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and practical coaching into a system that prioritizes adaptability. Although some readers may balk at the book’s many homework assignments, its coherence and credibility make for a deeply rewarding guide.
Thoughtful, rigorously researched, and refreshingly practical self-help advice.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798891384866
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Amplify Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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