Although short and somewhat awkwardly written, this volume contains some profound truths and offers a concise survey of how...
A slender self-help treatise on the aspects of humanity that contribute to a healthy, community-engaged life.
George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Why I Write” was a precise, slender, and gorgeously written survey of the impulses and practices necessary to becoming a writer. Readers may get the feeling that Maritz is attempting a similar feat in this manual for self-improvement, which outlines 11 tools to improve one’s life. They include “Reality,” “Character,” “Originality,” “Freedom,” and seven others. The book attempts poetic beauty (“Like a little bird in the sky, you can fly from the one place to the next”), but it often stumbles into rather amusing metaphors for human development and growth, such as its use of the ocean as a symbol for retaining one’s inner peace and getting rid of harmful personal relationships: “The ocean...looks after itself which sometimes means that it punishes those that exploit its resources to remind them to be grateful again e.g. by drowning ships.” There’s nothing wrong with Maritz’s overall philosophy, which is grounded in a wise and humanistic approach. However, the book might have benefited from a stronger edit, as the brevity of the work amplifies the import of each sentence. Regardless, the book does make excellent observations on human nature and, more importantly, offers sound advice on how to create a functional, healthy communal environment. Particularly apropos is the notion that a person’s greatest achievement is how he or she contributes to forming a healthy, prosperous community: “A society or group of people is only as strong as its weakest link.” The author observes that if a person adopts a standardized societal role that doesn’t accurately reflect his or her complexity, it ultimately doesn’t do anyone any good, as the person will feel frustrated and trapped within an inflexible set of expectations. Instead, Maritz encourages everyone to develop themselves fully and, by extension, develop a well-rounded, self-sustaining community.
Although short and somewhat awkwardly written, this volume contains some profound truths and offers a concise survey of how to attain not only inner peace, but communal harmony.Pub Date: March 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508847762
Page Count: 40
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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