A useful, thought-provoking but familiar collection of meditations.
A devotional offers daily lessons in practicing positivity and cultivating self-love.
In 2021, OBrien was inspired to start a Facebook group called “It’s Time to Believe in Yourself.” Now, that band is more than 45,000 members strong, and the author has turned what she has learned through facilitating the group into this devotional, a guide “to a new perspective and a new way of living.” Many of its underlying concepts will be familiar to self-help fans—especially those who read manuals designed and packaged for women. The author delivers the now-conventional dictum that we cannot take care of others until we take care of ourselves. Yet most of the guidance presented here focuses more on the self and not so much on the others. This may be precisely what some readers need to hear, but those interested in systemic, communal change—rather than personal transformation—may long for something more. OBrien does encourage readers to work on their relationships with God—also referred to as “source energy” and “my higher self”—but, again, this is more about increasing their own happiness than serving a greater good. “Make God your partner in life,” she writes. “Go on a journey together and create an amazing and beautiful life in alignment with love.” One fundamental premise of this book, which features paintings by the author, is that individuals create their own realities. This idea comes from the New Thought movement of the 19th century and is likely familiar to some readers from such self-help classics as The Power of Positive Thinking, You Can Heal Your Life, and The Secret. This is a powerful concept and—clearly—one that resonates with people eager to take control of their own destinies. OBrien’s writing style is clear and unadorned, and, although each entry is brief, they all contain plenty to think about. The myriad reflections are in the spirit of Simple Abundance(1995) by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
A useful, thought-provoking but familiar collection of meditations.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781039188259
Page Count: 462
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
