While this book seems to be mostly popular amongst young American college athletes and those around them (coaches, parents, etc) its applicability is a lot wider than that.

The thing is, as this book details, we don’t have to settle for less than optimal in our training—whatever “optimal” means for us, at any stage of life.

The style is largely narrative, and conveys a lot of ideas through anecdotes. They are probably true, but whether they occured entirely as-written or have been polished or embellished is not so important, as to to give food for thought, and reflection on how we can hone what we’re doing to work the best for us.

Nor is it just a long pep-talk, though it certainly has a motivational aspect. But rather, it covers also such things as the seven critical areas that we need to excel at if we want to be mentally robust, and—counterintuitively—the value of slowing down sometimes. The authors also talk about the importance of love, labor, and ongoing learning if we want a fulfilled life.

Bottom line: if you are engaged with any sport or sport-like endeavor that you’d like to be better at, this book will sharpen your training and development.

Click here to check out Mind Gym, and optimize yours!

We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Greger’s “How Not To Die”, which is excellent and/but very science-dense.

This book is different, in that the science is referenced and explained throughout, but the focus is the recipes, and how to prepare delicious healthy food in accordance with the principles laid out in How Not To Die.

It also follows “Dr Greger’s Daily Dozen“, that is to say, the 12 specific things he advises we make sure to have every day, and thus helps us to include them in an easy, no-fuss fashion.

The recipes themselves are by Robin Robertson, and/but with plenty of notes by Dr Greger; they clearly collaborated closely in creating them.

The ingredients are all things one can find in any well-stocked supermarket, so unless you live in a food desert, you can make these things easily.

And yes, the foods are delicious too.

Bottom line: if you’re interested in cooking according to perhaps the most science-based dietary system out there, then this book is a top-tier choice.

Click here to check out The How Not To Die Cookbook, and live well!

So, yet another book with “The new science of…” in the title; does this one deliver new science?

Actually, yes, this time! The author was originally a physicist before deciding that aging was the number one problem that needed solving, and switched tracks to computational biology, and pioneered a lot of research, some of the fruits of which can be found in this book, in amongst a more general history of the (very young!) field of biogerontology.

Downside: most of this is not very practical for the lay reader; most of it is explanations of how things happen on a cellular and/or genetic level, and how we learned that. A lot also pertains to what we can learn from animals that either age very slowly, or are biologically immortal (in other words, they can still be killed, but they don’t age and won’t die of anything age-related), or are immune to cancer—and how we might borrow those genes for gene therapy.

However, there are also chapters on such things as “running repairs”, “reprogramming aging”, and “how to live long enough to live even longer”.

The style is conversational pop science; in the prose, he simply states things without reference, but at the back, there are 40 pages of bibliography, indexed in the order in which they occurred and prefaced with the statement that he’s referencing in each case. It’s an odd way to do citations, but it works comfortably enough.

Bottom line: if you’d like to understand aging on the cellular level, and how we know what we know and what the likely future possibilities are, then this is a great book; it’s also simply very enjoyable to read, assuming you have an interest in the topic (as this reviewer does).

Click here to check out Ageless, and understand the science of getting older without getting old!