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THIS MESSY MAGNIFICENT LIFE

A FIELD GUIDE

Empowering words for women—especially those struggling with body issues—to regain control of their lives.

Inspirational thoughts to overcome self-defeating body imagery and low self-esteem.

The author of many self-help books, Roth (Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money, 2011, etc.) focuses primarily on weight and food issues. Here, she examines how women look at and compare themselves to an ideal woman who doesn't exist, a situation that leads to a skewed sense of self and, often, eating disorders. The author stresses the importance of taking action and accepting who you really are, whether it's in skinny jeans or not; ultimately, she writes, the only person you need to answer to is yourself. Based on her personal journals and interviews with the thousands of women who have worked with her through her workshops and retreats, Roth provides a gentle, guiding hand for those in search of comforting words to help them build self-esteem and assert control over all aspects of life. Depression, loneliness, and general feelings of emptiness are common among women with body image issues, and the author addresses them with compassion, blending her teaching with touches of humor, thoughtful reflections on her own journey, and motivating quotes from other authors. She also delves into dog ownership, the fear of death and dying, and reaching the end of the therapy road. "There isn’t a someday. There never was. No one has ever been to the future that you keep putting your life on hold for. All we have is now," she writes. It is vital to “do something, anything, that brings you joy and makes you feel as if you belong here…even for fifteen minutes." Though hardly groundbreaking, these chapters of simple advice are easily digestible, and reading one per day is a good way to start this practice.

Empowering words for women—especially those struggling with body issues—to regain control of their lives.

Pub Date: March 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-8246-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017

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MASTERY

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

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

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

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