On My Radar (Friday Edition)

In case you haven't noticed, it's Silly Season. Today I have a short list of some other books that grabbed my attention this week.

First up today is a book that could make a great gift for that person in your life that is concerned about their health and fitness. Timothy Ferriss' new book is The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Crown Archetype). This book is just quirky enough to make my list. From the book website:

This is not just another diet and fitness book.

The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation.

Book website

Interview with the author



Next up is an author that has a huge following but also receives a lot of criticism. In my book, that means he is doing something right. Out in paperback this week is What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell. I have read The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers and I am a total and unapologetic Gladwell fan. I have yet to pick this one up, but take it to the bank that I will.



Author website



If you're a navel gazer, the next book may be for you. Thomas Hurka, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto has written The Best Things In Life: A Guide to What Really Matters (Oxford University Press). From the book website:

For centuries, philosophers, theologians, moralists, and ordinary people have asked: How should we live? What makes for a good life?

In The Best Things in Life , distinguished philosopher Thomas Hurka takes a fresh look at these perennial questions as they arise for us now in the 21st century. Should we value family over career? How do we balance self-interest and serving others? What activities bring us the most joy? While religion, literature, popular psychology, and everyday wisdom all grapple with these questions, philosophy more than anything else uses the tools of reason to make important distinctions, cut away irrelevancies, and distill these issues down to their essentials.

Book website


And finally today, Ralph Keyes delivers Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms (Hachette/Little, Brown and Company) . If you've ever wondered where euphemisms come from, why we use them, or what they say about us as a culture, you would probably enjoy this book. From the book website:

Any word or phrase that gives us pause is a candidate for euphemizing. What gives us pause varies from place to place, however, and epoch to epoch. Euphemania shows how euphemisms went from a tool of the church to a form of gentility to today’s instrument of commercial, political and politically correct doublespeak. Categorizing high-risk loans as subprime made it easier to extend them. Controversial tax cuts are more palatable when called tax relief. Calling hungry families food insecure households makes them easier to ignore.

An overlooked source of euphemisms is current events that become part of the vernacular. One reason this happens is the entertainment they provide. Wardrobe malfunction is no more descriptive than flashing or simply exposing body parts but is a lot more fun to say. And who wouldn’t rather say I inhaled than I smoked marijuana?

Author website

Publisher website