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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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