A handbook seeks to help readers survive loss and grow as a result.
The latest nonfiction work from Green (Generation Reinvention, 2010, etc.) centers on an alarming reality for baby boomers: the prevalence of personal loss in their lives. The author alerts readers at the outset that he has lost many important people in his life—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and most tellingly his sister—and these deaths have motivated him to write a book addressing some of the essential questions surrounding the whole experience. Is there value in suffering? Can it make someone stronger? Is there more to existence than the life humans see on Earth? What are the virtues of showing mercy, even to those who seem not to warrant it? What changes occur when a person endures a major loss? What steps can readers take to prepare their own loved ones for their inevitable deaths? This last question is echoed throughout the volume by Green’s frequent invocations of Randy Pausch’s 2008 bestseller, The Last Lecture, in which that author makes exactly this kind of life summation for his children to consult after his death. Green’s work sensitively elaborates on the larger questions raised by Pausch’s book, using end-of-chapter discussion questions to help readers examine their own behavior at key moments. “Each of us is likely to confront at some point in our lives the choice to be merciful or not,” Green writes at one point, following it up with the question: “When you have punished someone in the past, how could the outcome and consequences have been improved through mercy?” These questions, as well as his many citations of modern motivational and spiritual authors, give this guide a very inviting conversational feel, a sense that Green is helping rather than merely lecturing. His reminders to readers to remember their blessings especially when times seem darkest will likely speak directly to those dealing with loss.
A soulful exploration of the way humans love and how they cope with death.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-76515-9
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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