And this time "How We Die" by Sherwin Noland, "The Human Race - A History of Hope" by Ruthar Barchman, "The Body - A User's Guide" by Bill Bryson, and "Einstein's Great Mistake" by David Boudanis
how do we die Reflections on the Last Chapter of Life / Sherwin Noland (published by Am Oved)
the book "How do we die?" By the surgeon, Sherwin Noland, it is a book that is relatively difficult to obtain in Hebrew - in general, you can only borrow it from some university libraries or buy it privately in a selection of stores that sell old books.
The book deals with the question - "How do we die?" Mainly in the medical aspect, but also in the philosophical aspect. In each of his chapters, the author talks about a different form of death and analyzes the processes that occur in it - for example, death as a result of ischemia of the heart, death as a result of a stroke, what happens in the aging process, Alzheimer's disease, what happens when a person is murdered (also in terms of his feelings), hanged, commits suicide by various methods, drowns or electrocutes himself. There is a chapter dedicated to AIDS and what the HIV virus does, and there is an extensive chapter dealing with cancer and its symptoms. The last chapters are dedicated to hope and the roles of the doctor - first as a detective who tries to diagnose a disease based on signs and then as a savior - but he cannot always save and one must also know how to give up for the sake of quality of life.
The book is an excellent book, not easy to read because of the content it deals with and actually brings up the thing we are trying to suppress, the fact that in the end we will probably die. It also combines the author's personal content and his dealings with his brother. Sometimes the book goes into details that are a bit tedious for those who do not understand the field of medicine and even what can be called "excess philosophies", but despite this, reading it is extremely rewarding.
The grade of the book - 9.2
The human race - a history of hope / Rothar Barachman (published by Pan and Yediot Ahronoth)
The book "Humankind" by Ruthar Barhman is intended to present the idea that people in extreme situations do not behave in an animalistic way, as is commonly thought, but rather help each other and become the best version of themselves. The media is the one that highlights the extreme behavior in such situations and therefore gives an unreal picture of what really happened on the ground.
During the book, Rahman reviews literature that made us think that man was created evil from his youth - such as the books "Baal Zevov" and "The Prince", and on the other hand, he describes what really happened when people were stranded on a desert island and how people really behaved in the twin disaster. He also mentions that the ancient man, in his tribal period, was not violent but very sociable, this is because no painting of war has been found in the thousands of cave paintings that have been discovered to date, and therefore claims that the violence of humans began with the development of agriculture and technological development.
In the rest of the book, Rahman reviews the Stanford University prison experiment (Philip Zimbardo), the milligram experiments and other experiments, and points out the flaws in those experiments.
He also reviews situations where actually turning the other cheek leads to a change in behavior on the part of the offending party - such as the prisons in Norway, Helden and Støy, where prisoners, such as those who murdered and raped, are in excellent conditions when the guards develop friendships with them.
At the end of the book, Brachman presents the theory of contact, which claims that people who know each other avoid developing hatred towards each other - for example, he gives the example of the friendship of German and British soldiers during the First World War, during trench warfare, to the point of celebrating Christmas together .
The book certainly presents a special point of view, which sounds reliable, although there is still, in my opinion, a certain abstraction or generalization on the part of the author. There are different people in the world and just as it is impossible to state that they are all bad, it is also impossible to state that they are all good.
The grade of the book - 8.2
The Body - User Guide / Bill Bryson (published by Kinneret Zamora Dvir)
The book "The Body - A User's Guide" was written by Bill Bryson. Bryson is an American science writer, my favorite especially since he always writes about something different in the field of science (for example one of his previous books is the book "The Brief History of Almost Everything"). In each of his books, he details scientific facts, with amazing stories, and he does the same in the book "The Body - User's Guide". The book is divided into 23 chapters, with each chapter dedicated to a system or a different medical field, with the chapter dedicated to the interesting points and stories behind the medical discoveries. In the book, for example, you can learn about Meissner bodies, the bacteria on us, Anton's syndrome, the story behind the Framingham study, why our veins look blue when our blood is red, the leptin hormone that is produced in fat cells, NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) , the ATP, David Strachan's hygiene hypothesis and the logic behind it, the biological clocks of our bodies, the opioid crisis in the United States, the sweating sickness, on the Hayflick border and other concepts and personalities related to the world of medicine.
The book sometimes contains certain compromises on the accuracy and correctness of the data and it is not certain that Bryson reviewed the book with the help of a fact checker, but still, it is full of fascinating information about our bodies and the personalities who contributed to the world of medicine.
The grade of the book - 9.4
Einstein's Big Mistake / David Boudanis (published by Aliyat HaGeg Books)
Quite a few biographies have been written about Albert Einstein. Both the man and his ideas created a revolution in our way of looking at the universe - thanks to the special theory of relativity published by him in 1905 and thanks to the general theory of relativity published in 1916. On the other hand, in the later decades of his life, Einstein's influence waned. Most active scientists ignored him, and even his closest friends did not take his ideas and objections to new ideas seriously.
The book "Einstein's Big Mistake" by David Budanis tries to explain the reason for this deterioration, when he links it to Einstein's personality - the qualities that led to his rise and success are the same qualities that at the end of his life led to his deterioration and inability to be flexible and accept other ideas.
The book paints a fascinating and interesting picture, definitely unique, about one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century.
The grade of the book - 8.6
The author of the review - Ofer Ben Horin, editor-in-chief - Youר Science news and the author of the book
"MRI the complete guide - medicine and physics meet"
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