THE 2021 BOPPYs Fake awards for books we love!
Best Book On Why Fido Would Eat Your Cold, Dead Body
Yes, your dog would eat you, given enough time with your dead, undiscovered body. That’s just one of many morbid revelations from Erika Engelhaput’s glorious book. Learn all about maggot farms, semen-eating flies that taint crime scenes, fecal transplants, animals more murderous toward their own species than humans, the nutritional value and flavor of a human (for all those cannibals out there), fatbergs, the sexual deviousness of penguins, the fear of clowns, peeing in the pool, misophonia, and more!
Best Book To Keep You From Yelling At Your Kids For At Least…24 Hours
In a book that proves to be the antithesis of the ‘helicopter parent’ mindset, Michaeleen Doucleff explains how ancient cultures breed courteous & productive children by treating them like enthusiastically helpful little humans. Why should parents find ways to allow the little ones the chance to help with seemingly menial tasks and not criticize the work? Is it possible that lowering your voice when addressing a tantrum is the most productive way to get a child to stop screaming bloody murder? Find out these answers & more!
Best Book To Help You Bond With Your ‘Crazy’ Prepper Uncle
What a ride Nicole Perlroth took us on with this real-life, technological thriller that exposes our digital vulnerabilities as individuals and societies. What exactly are zero-day bugs, and how can they exploit individuals and entire infrastructures? How responsible is the US in the genesis of this cyber warfare? Just how vulnerable is America to an attack that could seriously disrupt society? And where are those attacks coming from? Boy, that analog option…doesn’t seem like such a bad idea now.
Best Book To Justify Your Buzz
Did you know that alcohol has fueled human evolution by aiding our social, communal, and creative inclinations as a species? Ed Slingerland’s dazzling book makes that case, through what is essentially booze turning down the sensitivity of our prefrontal cortex to allow us to be less self-conscious in becoming friendlier people who think outside-the-box. Ed also compares cultural differences between Italy and Russia, countries that value drinking but with drastically different rates of alcoholism.
Did you know the mechanism that triggers the ‘runner’s high’ helps marathoners with inflammation, pain tolerance, anxiety reduction, and heightened focus on the task at hand? Or that this chemical reaction can also be activated thru ingesting THC? Thanks to Jossiah Hesse’s sterling book, you can learn all about the ‘cheat code’ that distance runners have understood for years, cannabis’ use as a medicine going back thousands of years, how and why it became demonized in the US in the 1900s, and more!
Peloton’s Least Favorite Exercise Book
Would Mr. Big have died of a grabber if he was lifting weights instead of fake-biking? Who cares! But thanks to Sal Di Stefano’s new book, we do know is that resistance training is superior to cardio exercise for the body & mind! Though Sal’s career as a personal trainer has involved working with top-flight athletes, this book is meant to help the average person understand why resistance training is invaluable to personal health. And he provides tips on simple ways to start feeling and looking better!
Best Book To Get Why John Cena Groveled In Mandarin
Though America’s relationship with China worsened under Donald Trump, missteps by previous administrations helped pave the way to where we currently stand with the CCP. Josh Rogin adeptly explains how does China embedded itself into educational, financial, and systemic infrastructures in the US and around the globe, allowing the Red Dragon to shirk responsibility for its active role in everything from genocide to the ongoing pandemic, and successfully silencing critics within and beyond its borders.
Best Book To Incite Piano Lesson Regret
How can a child benefit from a music education, and just how structured does such an education need to be? Renowned music educator Joan Koenig explains that a child is never really too young to enjoy hearing and making music, especially with others. And this activity leads to positive ramifications that go well beyond the song, including a boost in social skills, mood, problem-solving, empathy, and overall cognition. And it doesn’t even require structured lessons!
Best Book To Maybe Get Its Author Whacked
We’re blown away by Giovanni Rocco’s balls, not only for infiltrating and taking down some major players within the Italian mafia, but also for shunning witness protection in telling his incredible story to the public! Find out how this former member of the FBI’s La Cosa Nostra task force embedded himself and moved up within the family, the remorse he felt for those he’d taken down after forming an emotional bond, and why he decided this book was worth telling, even with the potential for added personal risk!
Best Book To Poke Your Zoophobia With A Stick
We would read just about any subject that Mary Roach puts her mind to. This time, one of our generation’s sharpest and funniest authors examines what happens when plants and animals break laws intended for humans! What is the proper punishment when an animal kills a human? How dangerous are elephants in India? Why did the 1918 Spanish flu make leopards crave humans? How are deer a greater threat to airplanes than birds? Find out answers to all of these questions and more!
Best Corporate Takedown
In this detailed history of Monsanto, Bart Elmore uncovers a chemical company engaged in a 100-year cycle of harm on the public by exposing humans and the plants we eat to toxins and technologies with detrimental impacts on our short- and long-term health. All in the name of trying to do good. Considering the manipulated safety data, billions spent in marketing, and very rarely suffering true consequences from its most egregious sins, Monsanto’s story feels eerily similar to that of Big Pharma.
An outstanding effort by Gerald Posner in laying out the Big Pharma’s nefarious history, from the days when babies were prescribed heroin to help with fussiness to the current opioid epidemic. Far too often drug companies’ medicinal successes have relied on manipulating data and information, especially after Arthur Sackler revolutionized drug marketing in the 1950s. Since then, profits have soared as public health often suffers, with the industry’s largest players rarely being held accountable for their negligence.
Michael Moss examines how Big Food has spent more than a century figuring out how to capitalize on the addictive qualities of food thru ingredients, packaging, and marketing. What makes certain ingredients addictive, and how can they be combined to become more alluring? Can marketing tap into dopamine to make the consumer crave a product? And how does Big Food use variety to exploit our desire to eat? This book will change the way you look at those grocery store aisles.