A smart, compassionate resource for anyone who’s ever wondered about polyamory.
Rickert and Zanin present a comprehensive guide to living and loving within a polyamorous relationship.
This thorough handbook covers all aspects of living polyamorously—from one’s initial decision to embrace the lifestyle and common communication mistakes to strategies to help tackle jealousy and set healthy boundaries. Some sections apply to readers in any kind of relationship, such as the need for a healthy sense of self-love. Other parts are specifically for those in polyamorous relationships, like a discussion about when and how often to begin new relationships. Each chapter begins with a relevant quote from sources including philosopher Hannah Arendt and performance poet Kai Cheng Thom. While there are some lists presented as bullet points, such as the imperative “Relationship Bill of Rights” (“You have the right, without shame, blame or guilt…to revoke consent to any form of intimacy at any time”), most chapters simply break down the material under headings and subheadings. While more visual learners might chafe at this, it does allow the authors to pack a substantial amount of essential information into the book’s hefty 400-plus pages. From the beginning, Rickert and Zanin allow that nonmonogamy isn’t for everyone. They never characterize the practice as being anything more than an alternative choice to what are current societal norms: “It is not the next wave in human evolution. Nor is it more enlightened, more spiritual, more progressive or more advanced than monogamy.” This nonjudgmental approach permeates the entire book, creating a safe and nurturing place for readers to explore their decision to partake (or not partake) in polyamory. Every facet of the subject is thoughtfully considered and handled with the utmost professionalism. With thorough research and a clear narrative style, Rickert and Zanin dole out facts and advice that readers can turn to again and again at any point throughout their polyamory journey.
A smart, compassionate resource for anyone who’s ever wondered about polyamory.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781990869587
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Thornapple Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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