A potent slice of social commentary and strategic advice on reclaiming valuable time and personal joy.
A filmmaker and producer maps out clear-cut methods to uncomplicate life, online and off.
The Covid-19 pandemic took a particularly devastating toll on Gambuto, as he struggled to find breathing room for six months while quarantining in his small Manhattan apartment. Furthermore, he was “tired of being tethered” to emails, auto-subscriptions, unfulfilling personal relationships, and compulsive purchases of unnecessary things. Building on his 2020 viral essay “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” Gambuto seeks to help others declutter by investigating what has made levels of happiness and leisure time in America consistently plummet in the last few years. He cites relentless levels of commitments, agendas, voracious consumerism, and social treadmills as the main culprits, and he swiftly but informatively moves through the relentless mechanics of “click-up economics,” strategic branding, compulsive consumption, and the conundrum of corporations gaslighting a pandemic-weary public. As he emphasizes repeatedly, breaking free from these habits and hindrances takes steely determination. He offers a viable prescription of email unsubscribing, browser blocking, app downsizing, and embarking on a “digital detox,” and he also shows us how to renegotiate work or personal relationships. The author dispenses step-by-step instructions on how to effect change and distance oneself from automation and become resistant to the sly allure of advertising. Gambuto’s enthusiastic delivery and practical self-help tactics will remind readers that significant internal work is necessary to clear out the clutter, making room for beneficial relationships in real life and online. Witty and passionately written, the book shows that “there actually is time to process your life” once you eliminate seductive inbox offers, opt-in links, premium memberships, and toxic “people subscriptions.” It all starts with the “deeply gratifying” process of cutting the subscription cord and being wholly present for renewal with oneself and communion with others.
A potent slice of social commentary and strategic advice on reclaiming valuable time and personal joy.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781668009543
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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