O verall, however, the message is clear: exercise is absolutely key. The advice that fresh food and vegetables are important also remains fairly constant, though sugar is now often seen as more harmful than fat. That a good night’s sleep is important also won’t come as a big surprise. However, new books also put the focus on issues we don’t always think much about, like keeping up our muscles into old age, or breathing properly.
“Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives by journalist Michael Joseph Gross…argues that we need to revise our attitude to the tissue that makes up 30-40% of our bodies. He writes, ‘Think how the world could look different if every time you heard someone say muscle, the first person you thought of was not some big guy who had taken steriods, but your grandmother. Making that shift is one of the best things you can do for yourself and the people you love.'” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Early 2025
Sophie Roell ,
Journalist
“Gabrielle Lyon is a board-certified family physician who trained in geriatrics. Her basic idea is that skeletal muscle is the key to longevity because most of the diseases of aging are related to deficits of muscle. She flips the script on a common view of the obesity epidemic, arguing that most of us are not suffering from being overly fat but rather under-muscled. As she interprets recent medical research, most people should shift away from working to lose weight and toward working to build muscle—because having more muscle can change the systems of the body in ways that prevent or treat most of the diseases that are killing us.” Read more...
The Best Strength Books
Michael Joseph Gross ,
Journalist
Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia has been a huge bestseller. The book makes a strong case for the importance of preventative care—or rather what he calls 'proactive' medicine—as opposed to just dealing with health problems as they arise. He emphasizes the idea of lifespan versus 'healthspan'—living not only longer but in good shape. If you don't have the time to read the whole book, a key piece of advice: "Exercise is by far the most potent longevity 'drug'."
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“Levitin is a researcher, a musician, and a scientist. So he’s an interesting person with a very varied perspective. A lot of this book is about how music influences the brain, and how music can be used to treat neurological issues. It’s not all classical music; there’s also music by Beyoncé and a whole bunch of other things. One of the real messages that comes from this is that there is no one-size-fits-all. Music as medicine is highly personal. Something that works for you might not work for your wife, your brother, your sister, your child. There are certain things about every person’s brain that work in particular logical and electrical shapes. So how this work depends on the individual.” Read more...
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize
Sandra Knapp ,
Biologist
“Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (The Coddling of the American Mind , The Happiness Hypothesis ) has a new book out, The Anxious Generation, which has been a huge hit in the United States, sitting on the bestseller lists for weeks. In it, he argues that the age of the smartphone has royally messed up our adolescents. ‘Continuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activities’ disturbs their sleep, fragments their attention, and acts, effectively, as an addictive substance. He links the rise of social media to a spike in mental illness and anxiety.” Read more...
Notable Self-Help & Psychology Books of 2024
Cal Flyn ,
Five Books Editor
“Ramakrishnan puts together all the evidence we have about the molecular and cellular biology of ageing and of cancer—and how this relates to mortality, and makes a very interesting point that I had never thought about, which is that there is a tension in the way our cells work in holding off ageing, but also holding off cancer. The two work at loggerheads; you don’t want to get cancer, but also you don’t want your cells to grow too old and to get too damaged to function. Preventing one can enable the other.” Read more...
The Best Popular Science Books of 2024
John Hutchinson ,
“A beautiful exploration of how problems in our brains can cause us to change. Its about the concept of ‘self’ and how pathological problems in the brain can cause people to become completely different, and therefore be rejected by society. It’s a very empathetic book, told in a wonderful way, and from a very personal perspective. You see this is a doctor who feels very much for these people.” Read more...
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize
Sandra Knapp ,
Biologist
“In a way, looking at diet is a bit like looking at smoking and cancer; it’s one of the risk factors for disease that hasn’t had that much attention paid to it, other than knowing that it was quite important, but also difficult to measure properly” Read more...
Diet Books
Tim Spector ,
Scientist
Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken is an enlightening book about the dangers of eating food that has had too much done to it—a.k.a. ultra-processed food or UPF. As he explains: "If it's wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient you wouldn't usually find in a standard home kitchen, it's UPF." While we all know that it's healthier to eat an apple than a Pringle, van Tulleken makes a good case as to why we're so attracted to ultra-processed foods and why they are potentially so damaging to our health.
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Why We Sleep is a bestselling book about the vital importance of sleep to human functioning. It's by sleep scientist Matthew Walker , Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of its Center for Human Sleep Science. We neglect the importance of sleep at our peril, he warns: "relative to the recommended seven to nine hours, the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span."
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