Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense

According to Seattle Times journalist McCredie, the rise in debilitating falls among Americans is reaching epidemic proportions, the result of a population's waning sense of balance. In the first half of this analytical primer, McCredie chronicles balance's role in evolution and the unfolding discovery of its function in the body through a jumble of stories about barbarous experiments on animals (pigeons, cats, etc) and humans-specifically, mental patients and deaf mutes. It's grim stuff, hardly indicated by the cover photo (young man, fluffy white clouds). Illustrations from 1934 that, while beautiful, don't match the current description of, say, the inner ear frustrate, while McCredie's tendency to fall into archaic language when discussing the 19th century aggravates. The second half is decidedly lighter, contrasting tales of tight wire walkers and acrobats with the stories of people who, through damage to the vestibular canal, have lost their balance. Here, McCredie writes engagingly of children on unicycles, Neanderthal man's hunting techniques, John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash and Nike knockoffs worn in China. Useful not only for its academic approach, this book could make a difference for anyone facing the natural challenges of aging.