Empowering self-improvement guidance geared toward active seekers.
A London-based life developmental coach and consultant shares her experiences in learning to live fearlessly and authentically.
After a “disastrous life” struggling with alcohol addiction and a crippling identity crisis, Brooke, a sober Black woman and social justice awareness advocate, writes about recognizing personal inconsistencies in her self-expressions and behavior. Throughout the process of correcting these contradictions, she learned important lessons about the damaging effects of close-mindedness and unaddressed internal intolerance. “I had unknowingly neglected my innate curiosity, empathy and understanding—especially when it meant understanding viewpoints that didn’t align with my agenda,” she writes. Her three-part narrative addresses how cultivating sincere beliefs, responsibility, and expression can encourage participation in difficult conversations, cultivate mutual respect and connection with others, and show us ways to “laugh at our own absurdity.” Brooke uses her real-world experiences as a former “blackout drinker” as an example of how powerful self-deception can be and how she overcame fear and denial. She discusses the importance of standing one’s ground and taking responsibility for actions, opinions, and behaviors amid phenomenon like cancel culture and online mob mentalities. The harmony achieved through speaking your mind and active listening is precarious, she writes, but it is achievable with mindfulness and practicing the situational exercises she presents throughout the guidebook. The author encourages readers to find their voices, and while noting that speaking one’s mind may not always result in a positive reaction, she shows how it frees the speaker from destructive cycles of self-censorship, self-sabotage, and social repression. To create a springboard for positive open-minded change in the world around us, Brooke advises readers to commit to looking inward and, most importantly, to do the work on ourselves first. Her bold book, though overstuffed with advice, effectively introduces the steps (and the risks) involved in achieving those goals.
Empowering self-improvement guidance geared toward active seekers.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780306835377
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hachette Go
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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