Review by Kirkus Book Review
Good news, for a change, about high temperatures in the age of global warming. The bad news: Excessive heat is deadly, particularly for individuals not used to it, and the worldis getting warmer for everybody. The good news: Even snowbirds and summer haters (like magazine writer and editor Gifford says he was before he researched the book) can teach their bodies to adapt to and thrive in extremely high temperatures, and evidence shows that exposure to heat can be good in all sorts of ways for the body and the mind. Gifford put his body through multiple challenges for the book, including undergoing heat training at the University of Connecticut's Korey Stringer Institute (named for an NFL player who died of heatstroke after a pre-season practice in 2001), enduring saunas in Finland and elsewhere, subjecting himself to a "hot tube" for a trial testing the effects of extreme heat on depression in the Colorado Rockies, and biking in Texas' excruciating Hotter'N Hell bike ride. "A few months before the ride, I opened Google and typed, 'Hotter'N Hell Hundred,'" he writes. "To which the algorithm helpfully added 'deaths.'" The breeziness of the prose sometimes detracts from the author's more serious points, but overall, the book is an insightful look at his subject. "Sweating is something that we humans do exceptionally well," he writes. "This is not an accident. Our ability to sweat to cool ourselves may in fact be one of our evolutionary superpowers, a trait that enabled our long-ago ancestors to climb from the middle of the food chain all the way to the very top." Invaluable for athletes in training, and instructive for those curious about humansin extremis. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
