The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer by
The creator of National Geographic's popular Blue Zones-now a documentary on Netflix-brings readers a beautifully illustrated and informative guide to the places on Earth where people live the longest-including lessons learned, top longevity foods, and the behaviors to help you live to 100-plus a surprising new blue zone. National Geographic Explorer and best-selling author Dan Buettner has traveled the globe to uncover the best strategies for longevity, which he found in the blue zones- places around the world where higher percentages of people enjoy remarkably long, full lives. In The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, Buettner returns to Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula; and Loma Linda, California to check in on the super-agers living in the blue zones and interprets the not-so-secret sauce of purpose, faith, community, down-time, natural movement, and plant-based eating that has powered as many as 10 additional years of healthy living in these regions. And Buettner reveals an all-new blue zone-the first man-made blue zone yet explored. Throughout his two decades of research, Buettner has worked with some of National Geographic's top photographers-including David McLain and Gianluca Cola-to document the healthy habits of the world's longest living communities. In this informative collection, their work punctuates Buettner's lively text, offering a beautiful tour of the blue zones.
I decided to read this book for a second time this summer after the recent release of the Netflix documentary Live to 100, based on this original book. It has held up well over the years. The book takes the reader to parts of the world where people live the longest and shares why these people live so much longer than everyone else. Filled with research, personal anecdotes, and suggestions for ways to live a little more like these amazing people from around the globe, the book is worth a read. I thought it was extremely motivational for making some healthy improvements to my lifestyle.
Audience: Adult/General Content
Related media: The Blue Zones Kitchen (available in print and E-book), Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, The Blue Zones American Kitchen, The Blue Zones of Happiness, The Blue Zones Solution, The Blue Zones Challenge
Available in translation in Spanish.
S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome by
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty. From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 ce--nearly a thousand years later--when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of Rome") examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation. Opening the book in 63 bce with the famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this "terrorist conspiracy," which was aimed at the very heart of the Republic, demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of Rome's subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, S.P.Q.R. reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and familiar characters--Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus, and Nero, among others--while expanding the historical aperture to include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of Rome's glorious conquests. Like the best detectives, Beard sifts fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record, refusing either simple admiration or blanket condemnation. Far from being frozen in marble, Roman history, she shows, is constantly being revised and rewritten as our knowledge expands. Indeed, our perceptions of ancient Rome have changed dramatically over the last fifty years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced attention to class inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.
One of the quintessential Roman histories for the non-academic enthusiast. Mary Beard culminates a lifetime of work into a highly digestible, easily readable, and very engaging history of Rome (the city itself but also the very idea) across the millennia. Filled with insightful images, maps, and figures along the way, "SPQR" is one of the best starting places for the Rome-curious, and also one of the great foundation-blocks for folks with all ranges of Rome expertise. (Take it even from a Roman History major- I learned a lot!)
Audience: Adult/General Content
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