Wow in the World: The How and Wow of the Human Body From Your Tongue to Your Toes and All the Guts in Between by Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; illustrated hardcover, 188 pages, $17.88, Kindle $9.99.

Guy Raz and Mindy Thomas are well known for their famous podcast, Wow in the World for curious children and their parents. This book grew out of their podcast journey about fascinating areas of science, technology, and innovation. Specifically, this book explores how the human body functions is cleverly woven with facts photographs, jokes, quizzes, and experiments.

This book is based on an illustrated journey through the human body into eight parts: The Head, The Brain, From the Outside in, How We Move, Pump It Up, Digestion: How to Transform Your Food Into Poop, The Immune System, and The Reproductive System: How Humans Make Humans. Engaging drawings, pictures, and humorous stories pull children into the facts of the body, historical fun tales, and good information.

Although the book does not describe the pelvic floor specifically, it does a wonderful job describing the urinary and digestive systems. The color of urine and what it means and how important water is are well illustrated with colored pictures. The digestion system spells out the passage of food right from the smell of food to how it is broken down through the mouth, stomach, small, and large intestine. The formation of poop will be interesting to any child and it is explained completely along with the history of the Bristol Stool Scale from Dr Ken Heaton and an illustrated stool chart. Practical advice in how to poop is given, complete with an illustration of elevating your feet with a stool.

Additional pearls are the glossary, source notes, recommended listening with QR codes, and a recommended reading list. The book is intended for children and will a welcome resource for therapists working with children, with their own children or those with grandchildren.

-Rebecca Stephenson, PT, MS, DPT, WCS

Millis, Massachusetts

Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness by Liuan Huska. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2020; paperback, 224 pages, $17.

The book was written for the public, as a Christian cultural analysis of our view of wholeness and shalom (Hebrew word meaning peace, harmony, wholeness, and completeness) particularly in the context of our own bodies. The author, Liuan Huska, writes from her personal experience with suffering chronic pain. She focuses on topics of embodiment and spirituality. Although there is no amazing reference to the healing art of physical therapy, our profession is neither highlighted nor slighted. The book is full of pearls of wisdom, quotable reflections, and beautiful integration of our cultural situation, which is wrecked with fear, anxiety, and desire to control our environment and the outcomes of our interaction with the world.

The topics addressed throughout the book's chapters apply to all areas of brokenness in our world, not just to chronic pain or illness. The chapters, Split at the Core, Elusive Healing, and The Myth of Medical Mastery include exploration of how our bodies have been mislabeled and misunderstood within the church... "hidden to make us feel more comfortable" and how "feelings of shame, confusion, and dissonance between body and spirit" have shaped our experiences to pain and illness. The author wrestles with the concept of personal identity and the disillusionment with God and the church often felt when the world and your body go outside "normal." Huska grapples with the concept of how we can trust the goodness of God or the bodies created in a world with sickness and death. She tackles the prosperity gospel message and how this message causes harm to those whose bodies and material circumstances by falsely demonstrating they are not "blessed."

The specific vulnerabilities of women along with structural inequality that contributes to stress and trauma are addressed in the chapter, The Burden Women Bear. My favorite quote being, "Women's bodies-our vulnerability, our sensitivity to pain, our heightened awareness of other's needs-have been used to violate, exploit and diminish us. But the way to redemption and wholeness is not to escape; rather, it's to turn these very vulnerabilities into strengths."

Also present is a discussion about the fallacy of control and the question, "Why does vulnerability carry such a social stigma?" The concepts and contributions of the American culture of unfettered economic growth, productivity, individualism, and independence are contemplated in the chapters on Vulnerable Bodies and Our Human Limits. The gifts and radical internal change that come through vulnerability and suffering are reframed in the chapters, The Craft of Suffering and A Different Wholeness. The final chapter is dedicated to the ideal of using our struggles, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses to minister to others creating, A Community of Wounded Healers.

In this book, wholeness and our connectedness with our world is reframed with beautiful reflections: "Shalom, as discussed, is not the absence of illness, disease, or disability ... it has to do with the presence of God. Vulnerability-acknowledging our deficits and relying on others to meet us in those deficits-is the only way to true selfhood and wholeness."

As a Christian myself, this book was a great help and source of contemplative reflection to my own internal struggles with our current cultural condition, suffering, and the proximity of God, going far beyond the perspective of chronic pain and illness. I would recommend this book for all Christian people who are struggling with the ugliness, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities of this world, particularly chronic pain and illness. Shalom.

-Lori Mize, PT, DPT, WCS

Batesville, Arkansas