A passionate and personal self-help work that aims to help people become the best versions of themselves.
A Christian-oriented guide to living and working with a greater sense of authenticity.
“Success,” clinical psychologist Guerra writes in her slim nonfiction debut, “is being intentional in your actions, honoring your greatness, and being yourself!” The author is the youngest of four children who later became a single mother of two, and she spends the opening part of her book telling her readers about her upbringing and how it shaped her (“challenging the status quo became second nature to me”). She narrates her time in school and her choice of therapy as a career path, working hard and playing hard: “I was at the top of my game,” she writes. “I had figured out the rules of this game called life, and I was doing well.” She also movingly relates the collapse of her marriage and the doubts it engendered. Her chosen life’s work had been about “helping people be honest with themselves and move in the direction of living in their truths,” and yet she says that she’d found herself far removed from her own truth. Guerra returns to this concept repeatedly throughout her book, effectively sharpening it into six “key strategies,” designed to help readers home in on the task: “Always honor your truth and your experiences,” she writes. “But remember that your truth and perceptions can change and evolve as you do.” Over the course of this book, Guerra’s prose is consistently direct and highly personable, and she alludes to her Christian faith as a balancing force in her life and her truth journey. Even so, she seldom addresses how, when speaking one’s “personal truth,” one can avoid it becoming a simple expression of egotism, which readers might have found useful. However, her advocacy of honesty and intentionality will hopefully inspire her readers.
A passionate and personal self-help work that aims to help people become the best versions of themselves.Pub Date: June 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781667829227
Page Count: 96
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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