In Defense of Food

by Michael Pollan

Pollan makes several statements in this book which should hit us all pretty hard. One rule to eating "right" would be "don't buy anything in the grocery store your great-grandmother would not recognize." His point is that the processing of food is what has led to a "western diet" and the ills associated with that diet. Nutrition science has stripped natural foods of the good stuff and replaced with synthetic, poor mimics of those nutrients. He mentions that usually the only area of a grocery store we should visit would be the area around the "edges." Think about that - I find that in the last few years, that is where I do 90% of my food shopping. This is a slow read, but it is full of "a-ha" moments. I will report more on this later.

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Marie Curie: a Life, by Susan Quinn

Just like most of you, I read Eva Curie's biography of her mother when I was around 10 or 11 years old (mine was is the Reader's Digest for Young Adults). I was, like you, inspired. Recently, I saw the reenactment of Marie Curie by Susan Marie Frontczak, produced on film by Jen Myronuk. The presentation was AMAZING! I really did feel as if Marie Curie was telling her story just to me. MSTA will be discussing sponsoring this presentation at a conference in the future. Susan Marie Frontczak talked with the audience via Skype after the presentation. She told us that she had read Eva Curie's biography in her preparation, but she relyied on the Susan Quinn biography for much of her research and dialogue. I knew I had to read this book, so I downloaded it to my Kindle that very day! The book is, of course, enlightening. I just happened to be reading about Marie's viewing the total eclipse the night before our total eclipse in August. I stopped so I could read th...

Silent Witnesses by Nigel McCrery

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Survival of the Sickest: an Amazon Review

Amazon.com Review Dan Ariely on Survival of the Sickest MIT professor Dan Ariely has become one of the leaders in the growing field of behavioral economics, and his bestselling book debut, Predictably Irrational, has brought his ideas--and his ingenious experiments and charming sense of humor--to a much wider audience. With the simplest of tests (often an auction or a quiz given under a few conditions) he shows again and again not only that we are wired to make irrational decisions in many situations, but that we do so in remarkably predictable ways. I have always been puzzled by the way in which genetic diseases have managed to survive throughout the ages. How could it be that these diseases were able to withstand the evolutionary process, where only the most fit survive, and continue to be transferred from one generation to the next? Survival of the Sickest provides a thought provoking yet entertaining explanation to this puzzle. In this insightful book Dr. Sharon Moalem demonstra...

Aleta's Book Report

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