A cogent and useful elaboration on a famous concept that advocates group support.
A motivational manual focuses on a key idea from the writings of a self-help guru.
The latest nonfiction work by Horowitz (Awakened Mind, 2019, etc.), like all the other entries in the Napoleon Hill Success Course series, takes as its starting point one particular concept from the oeuvre of the bestselling motivational author of the early 20th century and builds on it. In Horowitz’s case, the idea that forms the center of his book is the “Master Mind,” without which, Hill asserted, no lasting success is possible. Like many of Hill’s major concepts, the notion of the Master Mind is deceptively simple: It’s the gathering of a small group of cognoscenti in some field or endeavor with the aim of sharing ideas and encouraging and assisting one another with specific or general goals. Horowitz stresses in his text the main benefit of this that Hill emphasized nearly a century ago: the pooling of intelligence and experience taking place outside of formal business or organizational structures. This basic concept is mirrored in many later business manuals as the forging of alliances, but Horowitz underscores what Hill highlights, which is the deeper and more personal nature of the Master Mind. The members of Horowitz’s own such band (convened mostly electronically, over time zones and great distances), for instance, share “supportive natures, good humor, and spiritual values.” In clear, concise chapters of invitingly frank prose very much in the manner of Hill himself, Horowitz outlines some practices and procedures for establishing and running a Master Mind, and readers inside and outside of the business world should find these pointers intriguing. But throughout, the author stresses that the operation is as uncomplicated as the idea—and can have payoffs far in excess of the investments in time and energy. To make this point, Horowitz cites the testimony of his Master Mind partner Mel Bergman: “Whenever two or more likeminded people get together, you have a Master Mind group. It’s that simple. Really. If you can suspend your disbelief and give it a shot, it is inconceivable that you will not see results.”
A cogent and useful elaboration on a famous concept that advocates group support.Pub Date: March 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72251-014-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: G&D Media
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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