A compelling, spirited guide that aims to help readers understand who they come from.
A memoir and New Age self-help guide explores how the traumas of past generations affect present families.
“In this book, I will give you a glimpse into an invisible world,” writes Dayal-Gulati, an Indian-born economist-turned–energy healing practitioner. That world, she says, is one’s “family energy field,” also called “family karma”: an intangible, ancestral link that influences living people of today with the merits and faults of their forebears. Framed this way, everyone lives with the legacies of past generations and can’t unburden themselves from unprocessed trauma without confronting the past; family curses are very real, the author asserts, but can also be broken. Dayal-Gulati’s book is divided into four parts (“Healing My Roots,” “Healing Tools,” “Understanding Your Family Energy Field,” and “The Journey Home”), across which she shares her personal story of spiritual growth and guidance, her advice on the application of healing tools such as flower essences, and tips on how to achieve peace by accepting and honoring one’s ancestors. She peppers the book with anecdotes from her client work as a trained energy practitioner as well as her own life story of moving from India to Europe and finally to the United States while citing therapists, anthropologists, and the work of Carl Jung to effectively contextualize her approach. There are journaling questions, exercises, and guided prayers throughout, with which the author encourages readers to make better use of the book’s principles: “What if the emotions that keep you prisoner may not be your own?” The prose is lively, if sometimes overly optimistic, with ample queries and exclamations that give it a conversational feel. However, one will need to have knowledge and access to their immediate and extended families to fully benefit from this book and practice the rituals it recommends. Dayal-Gulati, who notes that she is not a trained therapist, is also upfront about the parameters of her work, noting that “most of my advice here is for those whose parents were not abusive,” and she recommends seeking the help of licensed professionals for complex trauma.
A compelling, spirited guide that aims to help readers understand who they come from.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64411-774-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Findhorn Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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