Thoughtful reflections and practical counsel on career downshifting at midlife and beyond.
The bestselling author and popular Atlantic columnist ponders a way to “get off the hamster wheel of success and accept inevitable professional decline with grace.”
Drawing from his media columns and research, Brooks, author of Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt and other books, approaches the conundrum of the later-life career striver from a social science angle and presents the bounty of his analysis through advice and encouragement. He begins with an idea that many professionals find personally devastating: that the majority will peak in their careers much earlier than they’d imagined, like entrepreneurial tech founders who experience creative declines in their early 30s. He examines the problem with psychologists and, most notably, career professionals feeling the pinch of dissatisfaction while remaining hooked on the pursuit of smoothly unabated career advancement. Brooks shows how this process of decline can bruise pride and elicit fear, and he investigates how it can also be difficult to comprehend and even more challenging to accept, as it contradicts our innate instinct to continue creating successful ventures. In accessible, affable prose that also incorporates spirituality, including teachings of ancient Indian and Buddhist philosophers, Brooks discusses the psychology and addictive allure of satisfaction. One of the less attractive but essential keys to achieving contentment, he notes, lies in the power of downsizing. The author urges those facing a midlife career quandary to move forward and discover new strengths and skills and to zero in on the things that bring lasting happiness—instead of merely “adding brushstrokes to an already full canvas.” Using his goal-oriented structure and sage guidance, like-minded readers may be able to break the “striver’s curse” and avoid unnecessary disillusionment. As he shows, there is real meaning and happiness to be found in the second half of adulthood.
Thoughtful reflections and practical counsel on career downshifting at midlife and beyond.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-19148-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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