Skip to main content

The First 20 Minutes – Gretchen Reynolds ****

Anyone who knows the reviewer would raise an eyebrow about my reading a book on how to  exercise better, but this is subtitled ‘The surprising science of how we can exercise better, train smarter and live longer’. Gretchen Reynolds delivers an impressive balance between exploring scientific studies in the area of exercise and practical guidance for everyday folk.
One problem with studies in health and fitness is that it isn’t always easy to tell the difference between a small subjective study with insufficient data to draw an significant conclusions and large studies that have been replicated and confirmed in their findings. It is also often quite difficult to distinguish pick out where the link between exercise and health is causal and where it is just correlated (i.e. statistically linked in some way, but the exercise didn’t actually cause the health benefits, because, say, people who do this exercise also tend to have a better lifestyle). Reynolds is reasonably good in this respect, usually making it clear where a study is insufficient to draw concrete conclusions, but the lack of certainly on the quality of the data in some cases is probably the weakest aspect of the findings.
Even so, this is a very readable book, perhaps particularly for someone who hates exercise. It also delivers a fair number of surprises – for instance that static stretching is actually damaging rather than beneficial, and that Andy Murray’s famed ice baths are nothing more than a placebo. Sorry, Andy, won’t be joining you. Whether you are interested in the science of the human body or want to improve your fitness with minimum effort, this book is well worth a look.

Paperback 

Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...