Kavinay
Some of it is cutting edge, some of it, as Ben himself warns, is “woo.”
Most of the training information is pretty solid, though it should be familiar if you have a strength training background. Since the book is aimed at endurance athletes, I guess it's would be incredibly useful to broadening their overall program. Fundamentally, the idea of black hole training is very useful.
Where it gets weird is with all the gadgets and supplements that Greenfield recommends. Leave alone the fact that I'm never going to buy all that stuff, he doesn't really prioritize the lengthy list of recovery techniques and supplements he covers. In other words, I don't really know what's the “Creatine” equivalent of a no-brainer technique for many of the broad training concerns he covers.
Overall, still a useful book, but use your own judgement (just as you should with all training advice).
A disappointment that continues a long tradition of Star Wars villains being under-represented in their own books. The writing is fine, but unlike the recent Tarkin or the excellent Darth Plagueis, the titular characters just have nothing interesting to do or say for most of the story. So much time is spent developing their antagonists that we learn nothing about the Sith besides the fact that Vader is prone to mopey Anakin moments and Palpatine enjoys mind-games with his staff.
In fact, the most interesting part of the whole novel is learning that an Imperial Moff had a same-sex marriage. That's really it. You get a glimpse at how the organization of the Rebellion started in Rhyloth, but that would make “Twi'lek Insurgency” a more fitting title than Lords of the Sith.
Not as revealing as one would hope. Most of the behind the scenes stuff between 2011 to 2014 is well known to anyone who followed Canucks blogs, etc through the Era.
Still, it is a quick read and the Canucktivity info is interesting. If anything , it's a decent book that could have been much better with more direct sources from the team.
In a way, this is a brutally tough read. But that's because Gawande does an excellent job of making you comprehend the helpless sense of imprisonment that besets the elderly and terminally ill.
The concept of the patient's conditions for treatment, “I want to be able to watch football and eat chocolate ice cream,” is a profoundly simple but effective way to diminish the burden on your loved ones. There's so much in this book along these lines and while the subject matter is grim, it fills a massive void in end of life wisdom that I doubt many of us would otherwise encounter until it's too late for our loved ones.
