My book collection - part four
This is my fourth book list post.
This time I’m providing three books that I’ve used to enjoy my time in nature, specifically the nature of Scotland. Time in nature is important to me because I find it peaceful, meditative almost, and I can combine it with exercise, either hiking or mountain biking. Here we go:
The Ancient Pinewoods of Scotland: A Traveller’s Guide. Clifton Bain (2014) – When the mighty sheet glaciers that had covered Scotland melted over 10,000 years ago, plants and animals that had survived in the unfrozen south repopulated the landscape. One of the pioneer species was the Scots Pine which when left to its own devices covered much of the country. Bouts of climactic cooling followed by clearing for farming, and felling to support Napoleonic and European World Wars reduced the natural forests by many thousands of acres. Sadly, in the last 200 years, over-intensive sheep and deer grazing has largely prevented forest re-generation, and our hill- and mountain-scapes are barren, except for non-indigenous monoculture tree plantations.
Today in Scotland we refer to forests as ancient and natural if they originated before 1750. In this book, Clifton Bain identifies 38 remnants of the ancient forests and arranges them in seven geographic groups for ease of location. He provides detailed descriptions and travel directions for each. Some of the remnants are large like Abernethy covering 2,500 hectares and some contain only a handful of trees clinging to the sides of cliffs cut by rivers like that in Glen Avon. Irrespective of their size, these forest remnants can contain trees up to 600 years old, they represent a healthy ecosystem supporting diverse species of above- ground plants and animals, and a healthy soil microbiome. If you want to recharge your biological and spiritual batteries, take a wander around one of the Scots Pine forest remnants.
The Rainforests of Britain and Ireland: A Traveller’s Guide. Clifton Bain (2015) – Temperate rainforests exist in Pacific NW America, SW South America, New Zealand, SE Australia, SW Japan, eastern Black Sea, the Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, and western Britain and Ireland. The common climactic feature is consistently high rainfall. The terms ancient and natural are used to describe native woodlands that have existed continually since 1600 in England, Wales, and northern Ireland or 1660 in Ireland and 1750 in Scotland. The different dates indicate the introduction of good enough maps.
Clifton Bain has identified 38 rainforest remnants in 12 regions of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. As with his book on ancient pinewoods he provides detailed descriptions and travel directions. These woods are different from the Scottish pinewoods but they also provide an opportunity to experience very diverse (maybe more than the pinewoods) natural habitats and opportunities to exercise, relax and marvel.
The Lost Rainforests of Britain. Guy Shrubsole (2022) – Guy Shrubsole is an activist for a good cause, namely to restore parts of our temperate rainforests. As such this book is less of a straight-forward resource to find and explore our rainforest remnants and more of an attempt to persuade us to do something. That said, he does identify 20 rainforest remnants in the western Highlands, the Lake District, Wales, Devon, and Cornwall.
The cumulative listing of past posts follows:
Human Evolution and Health
The Story of the human Body. Daniel Lieberman (2014) – The starting point for any consideration of my health is the evolution of the human body and its microbiome. This book offers an excellent starting point for understanding how we evolved to benefit from certain kinds of nutrition and lifestyle. It also explains how our more recent cultural behaviour may be at odds with our evolutionary past and how those mismatches may be leading to what we describe now as non-communicable chronic diseases. I provide a review of the book here.
Human Nutrition
Nutrition in crisis: Flawed studies, misleading advice, and the real science of human metabolism. Richard Feinman (2019) – for my money, Feinman is one of the best of our contemporary scientists. I’ve always enjoyed his ability to take complex subjects in biochemistry and cell biology and describe the most important of them in ways that a non-expert like me can understand. In this book he describes the vital role of insulin and the liver in maintaining a healthy blood sugar level and the consequences of overloading the system with simple carbohydrates.
The case for Keto: The truth about low-carb, high-fat eating. Gary Taubes (2020) – I first came across Gary Taubes’ book The Case Against Sugar through a recommendation by one of my go-to bloggers, Glenn Reynolds. Sadly, I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, despite its seemingly plausible thesis. How could so many people like me who consumed lots of sugar be so wrong? Oh dear..! In this book, Taubes describes how consuming to much sugar leads to weight gain and a host of chronic diseases. He goes on to describe how a low carbohydrate – high fat diet can reverse weight gain and many chronic diseases too.
Human Health and Disease
A statin free life: A revolutionary life plan for tackling heart disease – without the use of statins. Aseem Malhotra (2021) – Malhotra is a NHS-trained consultant cardiologist who questions the diet-heart hypothesis underlying the cause of heart disease and proposes that statins do not address the real cause. He explores the alternative causes of heart disease and proposes addressing those root causes through diet, stress reduction and exercise.
Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health – and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. Christopher Palmer, MD (2022) – don’t let the title of this book put you off. Whilst it is about mental health, the author does two things that fascinate me. Firstly, he de-mystifies the field of mental health by using anecdotes and language that allows a lay-person like me to follow his thesis. Secondly, and more importantly for me, he describes how the mitochondria in our cells are intimately involved in managing all aspects of our body’s cellular health, not just the production of energy as I was taught decades ago. I provide a review of the book here.
Eat to beat disease: The body’s five defense systems & the foods that could save your life. William Li (2019) - Despite the best attempts of medical and pharmaceutical scientists, the rates of chronic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, PCOS and obesity continue to rise around the world and increasingly in young people. Many such as I argue that those diseases are caused by what we eat. William Li agrees and proposes how the things we eat can avoid, and often cure chronic disease. In this book he introduces us to foods that are particularly useful in the context of what he describes as the body’s five defense systems, namely angiogenesis, regeneration, microbiome, DNA protection, and immunity. The third part of the book provides practical ways to eat healthy nutritious food.
Metabolical: The truth about processed food and how it poisons people and the planet. Robert Lustig (2021) – Robert Lustig is a pediatric neuroendocrinologist by training and one of the most active advocates for eating real food rather than highly processed ingredients. In this book he lays out a case for how modern medicine treats symptoms and not root cause of contemporary chronic diseases. He describes the eight pathologies that underpin those diseases and he describes how we can tackle them using a healthy diet of real food. This book is a good cover-to-cover read and a well indexed reference guide for ongoing research.
Pure, White and deadly: How sugar is killing us and what we can do to stop it. John Yudkin (2012) – My interest in how the consumption of simple, highly bioavailable carbohydrates may have contributed to my heart disease, led me to this book. Fifty years ago, John Yudkin published the first version. Before anyone else, he drew attention to the direct line between consumption of sugar and development of chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and autoimmune disease. I wish I’d known about this book when I first discovered Gary Taubes. Perhaps I’d have paid more attention.
For his efforts Yudkin was vilified and ultimately lost his funding, his laboratory, and his career. Robert Lustig describes some of the history in his introduction to this updated edition.
The great cholesterol con: the truth about what really causes heart disease and how to avoid it. Malcolm Kendrick (2007) – Kendrick is a fierce critic of the theory that cholesterol is the source of heart disease and that statins are the cure. He provides pages of argument and logic interlaced with wit. He also pulls no punches debunking our current healthcare approach to heart disease underpinned by the diet-heart hypothesis
The clot thickens: The enduring mystery of heart disease. Malcolm Kendrick (2021) – this is the follow-up to “The great cholesterol con”. He provides additional support by way of references to the academic literature for his criticism of the diet-heart hypothesis. I especially enjoyed learning more about how cholesterol is transported in our bodies and how it can’t be the source of heart disease. He goes further in this book by making the case that if and when the natural process of blood vessel clot formation and repair is disrupted by environmental factors, heart disease may result.
Soil and Regenerative Food Production
The hidden half of nature: The microbial roots of life and health. David Montgomery and Anne Bikle, (2016) – David and Anne are a married couple working in Academia. In this book they describe how our soils and our bodies are directly linked by the microbes present in both. Described as microbiota, this microbial world supersedes our sense of separateness from our environment. This book is a must-read if you want to understand how biological life on earth is inter-connected and we are reliant upon each other.
What your food ate: How to heal our land and reclaim our health. David Montgomery and Anne Bikle, (2022) – The much-anticipated follow-up to The hidden half of nature. David and Anne provide in this book a well-referenced summary of how our microbiomes create a direct and tangible link between soil, plants, animals and us. We are all inextricably linked together by our microbial symbionts and our health depends on understanding and maintaining those connections.
Fermented Food and Drink
The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World. Sandor Elix Katz (2012) – If there is such a thing as the fermentation bible, this is it. It contains close to 500 easy-to-read pages on co-evolution between humans and microbes, health benefits of fermentation and recipes for all types of fermented food and drink. If you’re interested in fermentation, this book should be in your collection.
The Noma Guide to Fermentation. Rene Redzepi and David Zilber (2018) – Noma is a (soon to close) Michelin-rated restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. Every dish in the restaurant includes some form of fermentation, and this book is written by the restaurant’s co-owners. In it you’ll find chapters on fermentation principles, equipment, and over 100 recipes. Of all of the books in my collection, this one contains lists of the most specialized equipment, tightly controlled fermentation recipes, and instructions on how to add fermented ingredients to your food.
Of Cabbages and Kimchi: A Practical Guide to the World of Fermented Food. James Read (2023) – This is the most recent addition to my collection of books on fermented foods. It covers ten fermented foods and (non-alcoholic) drinks and describes each with a mixture of history, folklore and recipes. The book is beautifully illustrated and is probably the most accessible to the lay-person in my collection.
Fermentation: How to Make Your Own Sauerkraut, Kimchi, Brine Pickles, Kefir, Kombucha, Vegan Dairy, and More. Asa Simonsson (2019) – The author is a Swede living in the UK where she is a practicing naturopath and chef. As with all of the books listed here, she provides guidance of fermentation principles before describing the traditional techniques, equipment and recipes she grew up with. I like this book for the Swedish insight.
Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.. Sally Fallon (2001) – This isn’t strictly a book about fermentation (it has sections on sprouts, stocks, sauces, and dressings) but it does have some useful guidelines and recipes not covered elsewhere.