A well-constructed, engaging call to action.
Former tennis pro Sprouse coaches readers on how to achieve their potential.
Sprouse’s self-help book relates the story of his challenges growing up, maturing and forging two successful careers (first as a tennis pro and then as a marketing practitioner), using his experiences as teaching points for the reader. At the end of each short chapter about a particular time in his life, Sprouse includes a Coach’s Challenge that encourages the reader to think expansively about what the author has discovered and how to apply it to his or her life. For example, in a chapter entitled “Realizing That Misguided Passions Are Still Valuable,” Sprouse tells the story of choosing accounting as his major in college because he was good at numbers, but realizing he wasn’t passionate about the subject. He learns this lesson after an interview for a summer internship that didn’t get him excited. Sprouse writes, “I failed myself that day, and it was the best thing to happen to me. It helped me realize the difference between being ‘decent’ at something with a little passion and trudging through every day, and being ‘great’ at something with tons of passion and embracing every day.” In the Coach’s Challenge, Sprouse asks the reader, “What have you been good at, yet were surprised about being good? Or, have there been things you’ve been good (not great) at but NOT passionate about? Now think about those elements that caused you to have some success, but left you devoid of passion. Those very specific items you can list DO mean something. For me, it was the numbers and analytics in accounting—but not accounting as a discipline. What about you?” Every chapter is a little pearl of wisdom like this one, an inspirational moment that should provide self-reflection and help the reader jump the gap to greatness. Sprouse is plainspoken but a pleasure to read. The book includes autobiographical glimpses of the author, replete with self-effacing humor, woven together with sound counsel that could have a measurable impact on the reader’s attitude toward life. And the forward was written by legendary Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz.
A well-constructed, engaging call to action.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1599322667
Page Count: 193
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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