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A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body
by James Hamblin
If Our Bodies Could Talk is a comprehensive, illustrated guide that entertains and educates in equal doses.
In 2014, James Hamblin launched a series of videos for The Atlantic called "If Our Bodies Could Talk." With it, the doctor-turned-journalist established himself as a seriously entertaining authority in the field of health. Now, in illuminating and genuinely funny prose, Hamblin explores the human stories behind health questions that never seem to go away - and which tend to be mischaracterized and oversimplified by marketing and news media. He covers topics such as sleep, aging, diet, and much more:
• Can I "boost" my immune system?
• Does caffeine make me live longer?
• Do we still not know if cell phones cause cancer?
• How much sleep do I actually need?
• Is there any harm in taking a multivitamin?
• Is life long enough?
In considering these questions, Hamblin draws from his own medical training as well from hundreds of interviews with distinguished scientists and medical practitioners. He translates the (traditionally boring) textbook of human anatomy and physiology into accessible, engaging, socially contextualized, up-to-the-moment answers. They offer clarity, examine the limits of our certainty, and ultimately help readers worry less about things that don't really matter.
"[Hamblin] does a stellar job with nutrition, covering supplements, multivitamins, energy drinks, and gluten. He calls out medical misinformation and marketing myths…educational, entertaining, and a bit eccentric." - Booklist
"In this fascinating book, Hamblin, a medical doctor and senior editor at the Atlantic, discusses why stomachs rumble, how much sleep we need, what causes cancer, and many more questions about the plethora of human bodily functions." - Publishers Weekly
"This book answers all the questions you ever had about your health - plus a whole lot of questions that never occurred to you but should have. Even if you don't care about your health you should read it, because Hamblin is such a delightfully amusing writer." - Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Innovators and Steve Jobs
"If you want to understand the strange workings of the human body, and the future of medicine, you must read this illuminating, engaging book." - Siddhartha Mukherjee, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Gene and The Emperor of All Maladies
"Jim is the friendly pocket doctor I've always longed to carry around with me, chirping helpful medical advice into my ear ... Without him, I might not have a body at all." - Mallory Ortberg, author of Texts From Jane Eyre
This information about If Our Bodies Could Talk was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Hamblin is a writer and senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. He was a 2015 Yale University Poynter Fellow in journalism, and his work has been featured by the New York Times, Politico, NPR, BBC, MSNBC, New York, and The Awl. He was a finalist for the 2015 Webby award for Best Web Personality, and Time has named him among the 140 people to follow on Twitter. He's based in Brooklyn, New York.
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