"Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense" stays on its toes

"Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense"

by Scott McCredie

Little, Brown, 296 pp., $24.99

What Mark Kurlanksy did for salt in his popular nonfiction, "Salt: A World History," Scott McCredie does for balance. (Not "balance" in the psychological sense. Balance, as in how we don't go around falling down all the time.) It's a tough sell at first — nearly 300 meticulously cited pages on how the inner ear functions? Really? — but it's actually a fascinating read.

Former journalist (and one-time Seattle Times reporter) McCredie excels at delivering nitty-gritty scientific details in the form of wonderfully memorable anecdotes. He explains, for instance, what is physically occurring inside the human vestibular system (all that balance-related stuff in your ears and brain) by describing the extraordinary acts of Ringling Bros. circus performers.

He illustrates instances wherein the system falters by analyzing John F. Kennedy Jr.'s fateful plunge into the foggy sea by Martha's Vineyard in 1999. Or by following a Tacoma-area woman with a special disease that makes her unable to walk with her eyes closed.

References to Northwest-centric landmarks — climbing Mount Si, sailing on the Sound — mesh nicely with references to scenes from J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy "Lord of the Rings."

Some of the book does get a little silly. A few of the author's personal anecdotes, like his ill-advised attempt to stand on a basketball, might send you skimming for a page or two, but the vast majority of the book provides fantastic, Malcolm Gladwellian fodder for cocktail conversation: "Did you know that the average cat can survive a fall from five and a half stories onto pavement?" Why? Because cats have good balance.

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745

or hedwards@seattletimes.com