Hunger: An Unnatural History.HUNGER: An unnatural History SHARMAN APT RUSSELL Whether it's urging someone to grab breakfast or doing its best to sabotage a weight-loss diet, hunger is a driving force not easily ignored. This book takes a look at how hunger affects the human body and how the drive to satiate it shapes everything from interpersonal relationships to whole societies. Nature writer Russell reveals the body's amazing adaptations to starvation, whether in a voluntary hunger strike hunger strike, refusal to eat as a protest against existing conditions. Although most often used by prisoners, others have also employed it. For example, Mohandas Gandhi in India and Cesar Chavez in California fasted as religious penance during otherwise political or economic disputes. An ancient device, the hunger strike was revived in England in the early 20th cent., on a spiritual quest, or during a cruel famine. She writes that while occasional fasting can result in weight loss, increased mental focus, and lowered blood pressure, long-term deprivation has disturbing physical and emotional effects. The text brings this fact into stark focus with a detailed account of a 1950 hunger study called the Minnesota Experiment, in which healthy young men on a starvation diet struggled with paranoia and desperation. Elsewhere, the text details how societies can collapse during famines. Russell provides a fascinating picture of the ways that the quest of food shapes our lives. Basic, 2005, 288 p., hardcover, $23.95. |
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