A wake-up call for nonsleepers, message driven but with saving glints of humor.
A graphic artist lays out at least some of insomnia’s causes while recording her own journey toward getting a better night’s sleep.
Having finally recognized the fallacy of measuring success by productivity alone, Burdock sets out to explain how she found ways over three years to “rewild” herself through changes in diet and behavior as a means of countering the constant high anxiety that kept her awake. In sections titled after the four classical elements, she recalls, for instance, learning breath control by playing a didgeridoo, controlling her sleep apnea by simply laying a piece of tape across her lips, and leaving all of her devices, even her smartwatch, in another room at night to get a better handle on her circadian rhythms. What the author is really offering here, though, is less a catalog of practical techniques for insomniacs than a set of scorching indictments against modern Western practices and values that lead to those long nights—most particularly the evils of bottle feeding, junk foods, and big pharma. As the makers of Crisco, Procter & Gamble “became the first corporation to market industrial waste as food,” writes the author, while condemning the modern nutritional privileging of carbs over fats. Is it any wonder that 70% of all Americans are overweight, as she claims, when so much of what they eat comes from the “Golden Starches”? Even readers reluctant to join her in saying no to “capitalist time and corporate food” should agree with her insight that obesity is more often a symptom of public and personal health issues than their cause. Too many talking heads and relatively static selfies in her dark, technically adept monochrome images only add further heaviness to the narrative’s lecture-some language and tone. Still, color pictures at the section heads do provide some visual relief—and closer examination reveals a puckish sense of humor best expressed by an embodiment of menopause as a leering, heavyset termagant perched on the suffering author’s shoulders.
A wake-up call for nonsleepers, message driven but with saving glints of humor.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9781637790939
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphic Mundi
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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