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Epoch Times
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
Epoch Booklist: Recommended Reading for May 16–22
This week, we feature a riveting biography of a late 16th-century artist and an insightful account of one woman's unlikely challenge to forego screens. Biography ' By Andrew Graham-Dixon He is known as Caravaggio, though his name, which the artist adopted, stems from the city in which he was born. His childhood was inflicted by the horrors of the Black Plague, and his life and art often reflected the horrific and painful. Creating works of unmistakable originality, Caravaggio is one of the masters, known for his usage of light and shadow. Graham-Dixon has unearthed a volatile artist, presenting him in the same ferocity with which he lived his life. W.W. Norton, 2012, 544 pages Nonfiction ' Related Stories 5/1/2025 4/24/2025 By Hannah Brencher The heart of this book—which combines personal anecdotes and reflections on matters of spirit, religious faith, and culture—is the author's challenge: to endure 1,000 unplugged hours in one year. Feeling worn down and empty in 2021, Brencher got what she calls one of her nudges: to turn off her phone and keep turning it off. Here, she recreates that journey of reengaging with people and nature. It's an excellent reminder of the benefits and blessings received when we take some time away from our screens. Zondervan, 2024, 272 pages Energy ' By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow Nuclear energy is regaining favor with some environmentalists. They see it as a green alternative to fossil fuel, but with greater reliability and smaller environmental impact than solar. It led to a 2024 decision to keep California's last nuclear plant open. This book explains how the reversal happened. It explores the emergence of a 21st-century nuclear power renaissance and shows how environmentalists joined forces with traditional nuclear advocates to create a reappraisal of nuclear energy. Algonquin Books, 2025, 288 pages Historical Fiction ' By L. Sprague De Camp Best known for his science fiction, De Camp also wrote five historical novels set in ancient times. Xerxes, King of Persia, desires immortality. His court magician claims Xerxes can get it with an elixir made from the blood of a dragon and the heart of a hero. He tells Xerxes that dragons live in the southern Nile River. Xerxes commutes the death sentence of Bessas of Zarispa, an officer, with promise of a pardon if Bessas returns with a dragon. This tale follows Bessas's adventures seeking a dragon. Phoenix Pick, 2013, 382 pages Classics ' By Boris Pasternak Set in Russia between the Revolution of 1905 and World War II, this 1957 novel roused enormous controversy, won the Nobel Prize for the author, and became a smash Hollywood hit in 1965. Physician and poet Yuri Zhivago, his family, and his love for Lara are at the story's heart, but the book is fascinating as well for its many discussions about Russia, history, art, faith, and more. Banned by the Soviets until 1988, Pasternak's romantic saga remains a warning against the dangers and cruelty of Marxism. Vintage, 2011, 704 pages For Kids ' By Alice and Martin Provensen French aviator Louis Blériot made the first powered airplane flight across the English Channel on July 25, 1909. This story begins with the Blériot family living in Cambrai, France in the year 1901 and depicts how Papa Blériot was inspired to fly and came to accomplish this monumental feat. It's a story of persistence, innovation, and family love. Puffin Books, 1987, 40 pages What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
WIRED
23-04-2025
- Health
- WIRED
Muscle Memory Isn't What You Think It Is
Apr 23, 2025 7:00 AM In her new book, On Muscle , Bonnie Tsui investigates the other stuff our thews remember—like how to grow when you exercise. Photo-Illustration:We all want to know if and how we can come back to form after injury, illness, or a long hiatus. Muscles adapt in response to the environment: They grow when we put in the work and shrink when we stop. But what if we could help them remember how to grow? As a general rule, cell biologists don't enter their careers by running through the gauntlet of top-tier professional sports. But in the years that Adam Sharples played as a front-row forward in the UK's Rugby Football League, he found himself wondering about cell mechanisms that helped muscles to grow after different types of exercise. A front-row position in pro rugby means that you have to be, well, 'quite big,' as Adam puts it. 'I was in the gym lifting weights from the age of about 12, I think,' he says. He spent much of his teenage life in training. When he was 19, he was playing a Boxing Day match on soggy ground that was heavy underfoot. He'd just planted his foot when a player on the opposing team tackled him, torquing his upper body to the left. His right foot remained firmly stuck in the mud. 'That's when I tore my ACL, but I don't remember much about it. You should ask my dad,' Adam tells me with a wry smile. 'He could tell you down to the minute, in great detail: when it happened, how it happened.' (Sports, I'm reminded, has the remarkable capacity to be a love language.) The cover of On Muscle by Bonnie Tsui. Courtesy Algonquin Books Buy This Book At: If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Adam took a year off from rugby and continued to study, completing his master's degree in human physiology. He'd always been curious about muscles and muscle growth, but the hiatus gave him time to think—pro rugby players, he was well aware, have notoriously short careers. That acknowledgment eventually led him to pursue a PhD in muscle cell biology. When we talk about muscle memory, most of the time we refer to the way our bodies seem to remember how to do things that we haven't done in some time—riding a bike, say, or doing a complicated dance we learned in childhood. When you learn and repeat certain movements over time, that movement pattern becomes refined and regular, and so does the firing pattern of neurons that control that movement. The memory of how to perform that action lives in our motor neurons, not in the actual muscles that are involved. But as Adam proceeded through his academic training, he became more and more interested in the question of whether muscle itself possesses a memory at the cellular and genetic level. Almost two decades later, Adam teaches and runs a lab at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo. In 2018, his research group was the first in the world to show that human skeletal muscle possesses an epigenetic memory of muscle growth after exercise. Epigenetic refers to changes in gene expression that are caused by behavior and environment. The genes themselves aren't changed, but the way they work is. When you lift weights, for instance, small molecules called methyl groups detach from the outside of certain genes, making them more likely to turn on and produce proteins that affect muscle growth. Those changes persist; if you start lifting weights again, you'll add muscle mass more quickly than before. In other words, your muscles remember how to do it: They have a lasting molecular memory of past exercise that makes them primed to respond to exercise, even after a months-long pause. ( Cellular muscle memory, on the other hand, works a little differently than epigenetic muscle memory. Exercise stimulates muscle stem cells to contribute their nuclei to muscle growth and repair, and cellular muscle memory refers to when those nuclei stick around for a while in the muscle fibers—even after periods of inactivity—and help accelerate the return to growth once you start training again.) Athletes have always known this to be true, at least anecdotally. After periods of injury, as with a torn ACL, they notice that it's fairly easy to regain the muscle strength they lost. The joints, though, are another story. Adam took his reconstructed knee and ground through another year of pro rugby before retiring for good. In his academic work, he began to investigate the why behind his observations about muscle memory. In doing so, he found a way to grapple with what it means to age as an athlete, and as a human. 'Looking back, I was probably overtraining in the attempt to be the best I could be,' Adam says. 'Because if you can find the exercise that provides your muscle with the longest-lasting memory, or find the type of training that your muscle can respond better to the second time around—after an injury, say, or after taking some time off—then you can potentially reduce the amount of exercise you do for the same benefit.' He laughs. 'I could have saved myself some work, I suppose. I've got that hindsight now.' Excerpt adapted from On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters by Bonnie Tsui. Copyright © 2025 by Bonnie Tsui. Published by arrangement with Algonquin Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A. All rights reserved.
