Tedious and imperceptive.
A filmmaker attempts to understand why so many marriages fail by interviewing survivors of divorce.
It's ironic that the author of this unoriginal book claims to have been spurred to write it by a hatred of self-help books and their attendant clichés. Former Spin senior editor Shapiro (The Every Boy, 2007), acclaimed director of Murderball and Monogamy, serves up cliché after cliché of his own, punctuated only occasionally by his shallow summaries of the lessons he's learned from his research. Perhaps the author really is motivated by a desire to understand why all of his long-term romantic relationships broke up before reaching the level of marriage. However, in most of his interviews, he focuses less on gleaning fresh insights about intimacy, communication and the nature of marriage than he does on hooking readers with tawdry, often-irrelevant details about his subjects’ sex lives. What lesson should we draw from the story of Shapiro’s friend who paid a woman to clean his apartment in the nude? “It's not that I want to be the type of guy who places sex ads on Craigslist,” he writes, “I just want to make sure that I'm never the type of husband whose wife would want to answer one.” Fair enough, but couldn't he have made this claim without subjecting us to completely unnecessary details of his friend's sexual encounter? After years of research, Shapiro's primary belief seems to be that the key to a happy marriage is having a partner who is willing to perform a couple of highly specific sex acts. Few would argue against the importance of a mutually rewarding erotic relationship, but, given the specificity of Shapiro's claims and the leading nature of his interview questions, it would be wise to take his lessons with an enormous grain of salt.
Tedious and imperceptive.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5777-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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