A quirky, earnest guide to regaining self-esteem for the modern woman.
A self-help book for women who consistently find themselves in bad relationships.
Frankel (I Wore a Thong For This?!, 2004, etc.) offers another title in the relationship advice genre, declaring that the reader must love herself in order to find healthy, lasting relationships with others. She sets out to help readers identify their self-destructive relationship habits, kick them and replace them with constructive personal habits. Before finding Mr. Right, readers are encouraged to learn how to stop finding Mr. Wrong. Skeptical readers may find it hard to get into the book until Chapter 2, when Frankel shares an anecdote about one of her own unfortunate relationships. These anecdotes, sprinkled throughout the book, prove to be the most engaging sections—in particular, the account of her spontaneous trip to Kilimanjaro is laugh-out-loud funny. Frankel uses her stories to help readers recognize similarities in their own lives. The advice following these anecdotes is friendly, with a humorous and self-deprecating tone. The book moves from identifying a pattern of bad relationships to planning exit strategies and getting over bad relationships; the rest of the book focuses on boosting self-esteem and improving life. Without being a scold about it, she encourages readers to take responsibility for their own happiness. Some readers may find the metaphors and jokes to be cheesy—“There was a time, B.C. (Before Crappy)…”—but there are some great practical suggestions for scrubbing a bad ex from your life and starting fresh with healthier habits, even if readers familiar with self-help books may not find anything radically new. There are a few less practical suggestions, such as starting a “Lysistrata Group” with the women in your life for sharing in “the collective female spirit.” Later chapters could have used more anecdotes and fewer metaphors, and it would have been especially motivational to see more anecdotes showing how Frankel used her own suggestions in her own life. Still, the main truth the book is built on, that self-esteem and self-worth are crucial to relationship success and a happy life, is an important one that readers will appreciate.
A quirky, earnest guide to regaining self-esteem for the modern woman.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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