Tag: Science

This Is Your Mind On Plants by Michael Pollan

Nonfiction

This Is Your Mind On Plants is definitely going on my list of best books I have read this year. It was educational, extremely interesting, and insightful. It is exactly the type of non fiction book that I like to read, a book that is written in such a manner that it is entertaining so much so that you forget that you are learning. I loved the mixture of historical stories and facts blended together with the real life experiences of the author as he researched and ingested three different plants in order to provide the best possible insight. He wanted to give the reader an understanding of what is a downer, an upper, and an outer, and he did an amazing job. 

The first part of the book is about downers, in this case, opium. This may be naive of me, but considering the fact that I do not use recreational drugs and I only rarely get prescribed a painkiller for medical reasons, I did not know that OxyContin, a famous opioid, was a downer. I also did not know that overdose and addiction to this prescription drug led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Deaths did not only occur from the very drug itself, but from those who turned to illegal forms of the drug after they could no longer get them legally. A disturbingly large number of new heroin users have turned to illegal drugs after becoming addicted to prescription painkillers. This is frightening, and I’ve gotten a little off track, but I was really moved by the above facts. The form of opium that the author explores for research purposes in this book is poppy, a plant that anyone can grow in their backyard gardens. The back and forth between what is currently legal and illegal, right and wrong, when it comes to growing poppies, was absolutely enthralling. I especially loved getting to read the original piece on the author’s experience growing poppy and drinking the tea which he wrote decades ago. At the time he was unable to publish for legal reasons, and the piece itself was lost for years before it was found and finally deemed safe to publish. 

Part two was about uppers. The easiest upper to get in the world, considering that it is legal everywhere, is caffeine in the form of coffee or tea. I learned a lot about a substance that I consume almost everyday, yet knew very little about until reading this chapter. There is an interesting bit about why we associate coffee with sobering us up after ingesting too much alcohol, why coffee is associated with masculinity and tea with femininity, and the relationship between coffee and opium and the terrible impact it had on Chinese culture. Although the chapter on opium was amazing, I became completely engrossed with this chapter probably because caffeine is a substance I use regularly. It both made me want to try and take a break from caffeine, if you read you will see why, and also continue to use it so that I can be at maximum potential and productivity.

The final part was about the substance I knew the least about, mescaline, or the outer, and the plants that produce this substance. Illegal to everyone in the United States, with the exception of those who are active members of the Native American Church, the plants have become endangered due to people poaching. This is a huge concern for followers of the church, as the plants are used for religious ceremonies and healing purposes, not to get high. They don’t consider these plants as drugs, and they find the term offensive. The plants are thought of as holy and sacred, and the individuals who are poaching the plants do not have the respect and reverence for them that members of the Native American Church do. You really need to read this chapter to even begin to get an understanding of what these plants mean to these people as a whole. Honestly, from the way the author described it, unless you have grown up within this religion or you join it and devote your whole heart to it, you will never really understand.

If anyone made it through that incredibly long review, thank you. I will try to keep my next one shorter, I don’t think it will be a challenge actually because I don’t think the next book I read will come close to this. I can only hope that I read one or two more books that are this good by the end of the year.

The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

Nonfiction

This man might be my new favorite author. His storytelling talent is so great that he can make anyone enjoy reading about biology and disease. Two months ago I read his book, The Hot Zone, and it was the scariest piece of nonfiction I have ever read. This book was less frightening in my opinion, partly due to the less graphic descriptions of what the smallpox virus can do to the human body. But, the implications of what could happen if someone somewhere decided to release one of the many strains of smallpox that are kept frozen in tubes and stored in chained containers in secret locations, that induces worry and fear. In addition to exploring the history of smallpox and the possibility of it being used as a biological weapon, we are also treated to a play by play of what happened in the days following September 11, 2001 with the anthrax scare. What happened with anthrax could happen with smallpox, or any airborne killer, only it would most definitely be much more devastating.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of Richard Preston’s novels. I feel like I won’t be making a bad decision in purchasing another one of his books since I have immensely enjoyed two of his works already.

The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson

Nonfiction

I can’t believe that I found another book about disease and illness that I loved so much when I just finished one not too long ago. It’s the perfect mix of biography and advocacy, but also medical science that an average person will be able to understand. Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson do an incredible job of telling the story of his battle against a killer bacteria, from the days leading up to his first symptoms, to a year after he finally was able to leave the hospital.

While I was already aware of the dangers our society is facing regarding antibiotic resistance, these two doctors really get the point across that this is an issue that we need to be more aware of and that we need to start making a plan of action towards. In this book, you can learn about how some bacteria have gone from harmless to deadly, the speeds at which they can detect threats and adapt to them, and how quickly they are able to pass along what they have learned when they reproduce, which all factor into how and why some bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. When a deadly bacteria is resistant to all the medications you can throw at it, the last thing you may be able to do is attack it with bacteriophages, or viruses, but most people do not know about this type of treatment. Even so, knowing about this treatment doesn’t mean you can get it because the treatment is not available everywhere. It has pretty much only been implemented in medical facilities in Georgia and Poland since phage therapy was discovered. Other than that, phage therapy is mostly only studied in labs in very few locations elsewhere and it’s not tested or used to treat humans. This is pretty frightening. 

While not as terrifying as some of the other medical and psychology books I have read, it is still scary to know that there is a really good treatment out there that is not being utilized to its full potential because it is thought of as dangerous, taboo, or second best to traditional antibiotics. I am going to keep my eye out for more books on the subject because I am very curious about this subject seeing as it could be the future of medicine.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Nonfiction

I never thought that the most horrifying book I would ever read would be nonfiction. The first twenty pages alone are just as anxiety-inducing and frightening as the beginning of a scary movie. I felt nearly the same as I would during the first few minutes into watching a new thriller, I was unsure as to what type of horror awaited me and I was anticipating being scared.The narrative, the detail, it’s incredible, the way this man writes is absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t turn my eyes from the page, so much so that I haven’t read a piece of nonfiction this fast in a long time. I can’t even remember where I heard about this book and why I thought it was wish list worthy, but I am so elated that I finally made the decision to buy it. I could read this book over and over again. I feel like this says a lot for a book that is about the Ebola and Marburg viruses. 

However, if you have a hard time reading about blood and gruesome bodily functions, I would suggest staying away. I love the macabre, but there were times when I was like, wow, the author really isn’t holding back here, this couldn’t be any more graphic. There were passages that even I thought were a bit too much. At the same time, this attention to detail will not deter me from purchasing another book written by this man, a book that happens to contain the same subject matter, Crisis in the Red Zone, which I hope to read and review in the near future.

Elementary: The Periodic Table Explained by James M. Russell

Nonfiction

This is another book store browse find. It was in the discount section, and I ultimately decided to buy it because a friend of mine mentioned that she was taking some courses to learn more about her job, which deals with chemicals. Basically, she inspired me to learn more about what everything is made of.

The book is broken into pleasant sections. The first section is elements 1-56, where you get the name of the element, its symbol, atomic weight, atomic number, color, melting and boiling point, and when it was first identified. You are also given a brief history, additional facts, and sometimes an interesting anecdote. The next section is elements 57-71, the lanthanides. They all have the same number of electrons in the outer shell, and they have a lot of similarities so these elements aren’t given as much detail in their individual sections. They appear as the top row of that separate section you see in the periodic table. The third section is elements 73-94. The format of this section is like that of the first section, each element is discussed in greater detail. Lab created elements, those that do not exist in nature and only exist for short periods of time in a lab setting, are explained in section four. Two of these elements were only just added to the periodic table in 2011, and no new elements have been discovered or added to it since. The book concludes with a very brief section mentioning how we would go about finding additional elements. 

I learned a lot from this book. I would recommend it, but if you really need to acquire a great deal of knowledge, I would suggest getting a textbook. This is more for someone who wants to read for fun. Additionally, I am glad that I picked this because it reminded me about a book on my shelf that I haven’t read in a really long time that I now want to go back to. It might be coming soon to this blog.