All in all, good advice for making the most of the rest of one’s life.
Advice for newly single seniors from someone who’s been there.
In this catch-all self-help book, Hutchins addresses about every conceivable situation or fear a survivor of a long relationship might encounter upon finding him- or herself alone in the world for the first time in decades. With her friendly, encouraging style, the author doles out pointers, resources and the necessary kick-in-the-pants from time to time, to help readers claim the potential happiness awaiting them in the next phase of life. Seniors can find numerous opportunities for meeting new, compatible people, as well as achieving self-fulfillment and financial security, she argues, by tapping into their talents and interests, latent or not. The author guides newly single seniors past the pitfalls of dating again after so many years out of the game, such as indulging in bad habits picked up during a long relationship and talking incessantly about one’s ex. She offers no-nonsense advice on taking an honest look in the mirror and fixing what needs fixing–money problems, alcohol or substance abuse, etc.–and surmounting other challenges–impotence, dating after a mastectomy, etc.–with a little creativity and a healthy outlook. Hutchins also tackles the thorny issues seniors may face once they’ve found someone and are starting a new, serious relationship–ranging from whether or not to co-habit and/or marry again to how to deal with resentful adult children–and offers suggestions on how to resolve them. The author illustrates her wide-ranging wisdom throughout with both real and fictional stories about the subjects she addresses. Hutchins’s work is a collection of conversations with a highly knowledgeable, sensitive, insightful friend. Her suggestions are widely applicable, for both men and women, while also being highly practical and specific. Some readers may enjoy the loosely organized, casual style of the book, but others may wish for a little more cohesion between chapters.
All in all, good advice for making the most of the rest of one’s life.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-43825-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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