An accessible, if somewhat overly broad, health guide.
A Los Angeles-based psychotherapist offers a guide to improving one’s health and aging well.
Gilberg writes that he’s always sought to treat his patients holistically. Positive mental health requires being in touch with one’s physical well-being, and as a practicing psychiatrist for more than 50 years, the author is well placed to serve as a guide to that well-being. Specifically, his book serves as an attempt to allow readers to achieve the same quality of life that he helps his patients enjoy. The book focuses on practical advice, listed as a series of “prescriptions” for self-improvement and distributed among seven themes, including physical and mental fitness, coping with trauma, and romantic relationships. He tells those coping with loneliness to consider volunteer opportunities, warns older adults to be wary of antidepressants, and reminds all readers to respect others’ methods of grief over losing loved ones. Each part also includes anonymous patient anecdotes, such as a story of a parent coping with the death of their son, caused by an intoxicated driver. Gilberg didn’t tell the parent to deny or attempt to immediately “cure” any of his feelings; rather, he acknowledged that the pain that he was experiencing was what he needed to feel in that moment. At other points, Gilberg’s advice serves to shift the perspective of his imagined readers, for example by telling the parents and grandparents of LGBTQ+ children: “I understand how you feel. Now tell me how they feel.” The books’ prescriptions are well-reasoned, accessibly written, and don’t shy away from topics that some might find taboo, such as age-gap relationships. The cost of this breadth is that the book covers many of its 43 subjects too generally to offer acute or unexpected insights. It’s undeniable that finding community, taking care of one’s physical health, and considering others’ feelings are crucial components of general well-being, but such advice lacks enough nuance to have significant impact. Gilberg’s expertise is seen best in the anecdotes, and they should find a place at the core of his writing.
An accessible, if somewhat overly broad, health guide.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9798895651209
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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