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"Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body. As compulsively readable as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner's manual for everybody. Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body--how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, "We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted." The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information"--… (meer)
Aangename verzameling wistjedatjes over het menselijk lichaam, onze organen en kleine en grotere kwalen, losjes gebaseerd op de vindingen van latere Nobelprijswinnaars voor de Geneeskunde of inmiddels vergeten wetenschappers. ( )
"He has waded through a PhD’s worth of articles, interviewed a score of physicians and biologists, read a library of books, and had a great deal of fun along the way. There’s a formula at work – the prose motors gleefully along, a finely tuned engine running on jokes, factoids and biographical interludes."
School biology teachers, rejoice. The students who filled your labs but paid only drowsy attention to long explanations of meiosis and mitosis are likely now lining up for Bill Bryson’s latest bound-to-be bestseller, The Body: A Guide for Occupants. Your message will finally get through – if not in detail then at least in substance.
Discussing respiration, for instance, Bryson writes that what we breathe in is 80 per cent nitrogen, which “goes into your lungs and straight back out again, like an absent-minded shopper who has wandered into the wrong store”.
This your former students will remember. This is why Bryson earns the big bucks.
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At 450 pages, this is a healthily sized volume that is occasionally a little repetitious, and might have benefited from a visit to the surgeon for a little trim. Nevertheless, there are omissions, such as an absence of discussion of the body’s innumerable on-board parasites and the role they play, which is often beneficial.
Yet much time is spent telling us what we know we don’t know. “Your body is a universe of mystery,” says Bryson. Only 2 per cent of our DNA appears to do anything practical, and fully 10 per cent seems to be gibberish. No one knows why we yawn.
But what we do know is wonderful, and how we found it out equally so. Bryson often diverts into discussion of the lives of scientists involved in various breakthroughs. He is particularly keen to give recognition to researchers whose discoveries have improved the human condition but who have gone unfairly unrecognised.
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At times Bryson’s language is philosophically floppy. A description of the marvellous complexity of the eye provides the opportunity for a swipe at the Victorians for holding it up as an example of intelligent design. “It was an odd choice because the eye is really rather the reverse – literally so, for it is built back to front.” Yet he frequently discusses the “design” of other organs before reaching a discussion of childbirth in which he confronts the issue straight on.
“If ever there was an event that challenges the concept of intelligent design, it is the act of childbirth. No woman, however devout, has ever in childbirth said, ‘Thank you, Lord, for thinking this through for me.’”
Without Bryson’s existing reputation, it’s unclear whether this book would sell particularly well. He’s a master communicator, but there’s a slightly plodding progress from one topic to another, and those hoping to be more than slightly tickled by the humour would do well to look elsewhere.
But just as he once did on the byways and back roads of Australia, the US and the UK, Bryson takes the reader on a little trip, not claiming the inside knowledge of most guides, but knowledge of the insides.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
To Lottie. Welcome to you, too.
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Long ago, when I was a junior high school student in America, I remember being taught by a biology teacher that all the chemicals that make up a human body could be bought in a hardware store for $5 or something like that.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
(p180) Study after study since then (the late 1940's?) has shown that exercise produces extraordinary benefits. Going for regular walks reduces the risk of heart attack or stroke by 31 per cent (sic scil percent).
(p223) Although two of the world's most prestigious medical journals had now (in 1950) demonstrated a clear association between smoking and lung cancer, the findings had almost no effect. People just loved smoking too much to quit. (p224) When Britain's Minister of Health, Iain Macleod, formally announced at a press conference (in 1952) that there was an unequivocal connection between smoking and lung cancer, he rather undercut his position by smoking conspicuously as he did so. (p224) In 1964, the US surgeon general announced an unequivocal link between smoking and lung cancer, but the announcement had little effect. The number of cigarettes smoked by the average American over the age of 16 fell slightly from 4,340 a year before the announcement to 4,200 afterwards, but then climbed back to about 4,500 and stayed there for years. Remarkably, the American Medical Association took fifteen years to endorse the surgeon general's finding.
(p236) ... a 150g serving of white rice or a small bowl of cornflakes will have the same effect on your blood glucose levels as nine teaspoons of sugar.
(p378) ... at present only about one person in ten thousand lives to be even a hundred. ... The chances of reaching your one-hundred-and-tenth birthday are about one in seven million. ... The longest-lived person that we know of was Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, in Provence, who died at the decidedly ripe age of 122 years, 164 days in 1997. ... Calment had a leisurely life: Her father was a rich shipbuilder and her husband a prosperous businessman. She never worked. Calment smoked all her life - at the age of 117, when she finally gave up, she was still smoking two cigarettes a day - and ate a kilo of chocolate every week, but was active up to the very end and enjoyed robust health.
(p442, 443 Large Print Edition) The moment of birth, the starting of a new life, really is quite a miracle. In the womb, a fetus's lungs are filled with amniotic fluid, but with exquisite timing at the moment of birth the fluid drains away, the lungs inflate, and blood from the tiny, freshly beating heart is sent on its first circuit around the body. What had until a moment before effectively been a parasite is now on its way to becoming a fully independent, self-maintaining entity.
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
And that's you gone. But it was good while it lasted, wasn't it?
"Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body. As compulsively readable as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner's manual for everybody. Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body--how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, "We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted." The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information"--