A confidence builder for readers with hearts full of wanderlust.
Heiter and Weinstein present an informative guide for travelers on their own.
The authors, both experienced solo voyagers, have collaborated on a guide aimed at encouraging travelers to be open to adventure, which can be had without breaking the bank. Unlike a standard guidebook, which generally ticks off places to see, this is a testimonial to travel as immersion: “slowing down and branching out beyond the comforts of what you think you know.” The authors stress the importance of doing advance research and preparation while being open to new experiences and unexpected changes in plans. They also emphasize that readers must respect ways of life that are different from their own: “As travelers, it is our social responsibility to reserve judgment and approach other cultures with an open mind (and heart), eager to learn and grow through the experiences gifted, shared, or created by those we encounter along the way.” In addition to highlighting travel’s consciousness-raising effects, the book offers a substantial amount of practical guidance based on the authors’ extensive journeys. Information that’s not usually found in travel guides—about menstruation while traveling, and the different types and availability of hygiene products worldwide—may be especially helpful to women. General advice about visas, vaccines, travelers’ insurance, common scams, packing, tipping, staying in hostels, and using alternative modes of transportation will help younger or novice travelers. Useful websites are listed at the end of the book (with the caveat that contact information may change at any time). Overall, the authors are earnest in their belief that travel is life-altering and should be experienced sooner rather than later. Their personal reflections, sprinkled throughout, will encourage those who want to set out on a solo travel adventure but also desire some wise advice before setting out.
A confidence builder for readers with hearts full of wanderlust.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798989175109
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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