Inspiring reading for budding entrepreneurs.
A celebrated gay venture capitalist offers advice about "how diversity could be our greatest superpower."
In 2018, Hamilton became "the first “Black female noncelebrity to grace the front cover of Fast Company magazine." Before that, she was a live music production coordinator fascinated by the alien world of venture capitalism. In her debut, the author provides a guide for anyone not in "the straight white male population" to “do the thing they’re passionate about." Drawing on her experiences in both music and business, she emphasizes the need to gather information in all ways possible: not just by consuming print and online information, but also by connecting with people in one’s chosen area of interest. For “underestimated people," in particular, gathering together a diverse collective of individuals and not buying into the myth of the self-made person is key to success. “I am made up of my brother, my wife, my friends,” and every member of her company, Backstage Capital. Hamilton also highlights the need to “amplify the voices of those without a microphone," especially in cases where an individual has gained enough power and influence to be heard. One of very few African Americans who seek to create a funding pool for startups headed by other minorities, Hamilton at first received many rejections from the (white male) business establishment she courted. She tells readers to expect the same but to also cultivate both an extra measure of self-confidence as well as forgiveness, which she calls “the ultimate productivity hack." Resilience—part of a person’s “adaptability quotient"—fosters the ability to move forward. At the same time, Hamilton urges fighting against the business establishment’s proliferation of "hustle porn" by trading in “hustle for self-care." Refreshing in its inclusivity, Hamilton’s book offers wise and practical lessons from the margins to all “underestimated people” looking to make a difference in the world of business and beyond.
Inspiring reading for budding entrepreneurs.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13641-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Currency
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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