A brief but edifying remembrance that’s filled with poignant personal reflection, as well as moments of international...
A personal memoir about a man’s difficult relationship with his father, his search for enlightenment, and his obsession with tennis.
Debut author Cox’s dad worked in the U.S. Foreign Service, and as a result, he spent his own childhood traveling the globe. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1960, and he and his family went on to live in various places on several different continents; in 1965, for instance, they were evacuated from Saigon, Vietnam, as war arrived. Following in his father’s footsteps, the author became an avid tennis enthusiast, and even took lessons from a student of Pancho Gonzalez, one of the world’s best tennis players, while living in Laos. Cox relates his turbulent relationship with his father, whom he characterizes as cold and sometimes emotionally abusive; still, the author compulsively practiced his tennis game to win his dad’s praise—and to finally beat him on the court. In fact, he trained so tenaciously that the wear and tear on his body forced him to take an extended hiatus from the sport. Eventually, his mother remarried, and Cox joined his sister in the Pacific Northwest to go to college, where he again played tennis. There, he also became intensely interested in Eastern philosophy, meditation, and yoga; he trained at a holistic yoga center before accepting the life-changing mentorship of Dennis Adams, a self-proclaimed psychic. Throughout this memoir, Cox writes movingly of his lifelong search for inner peace, as well as about his uphill battle to free himself from the grim influence of a mercurial parent. He also arrestingly describes his own spiritual experiences on the path to enlightenment: “it felt like I was connected to everything that existed through small streams of energy or light. This web of light was a soft, conscious energy; it flowed between me and everything else in existence.” In the end, Cox delivers an intriguing life story that depicts Eastern spiritual practice as a tonic to Western culture.
A brief but edifying remembrance that’s filled with poignant personal reflection, as well as moments of international adventure.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection...
A Dumpster diver–turned-CEO details her rise to success and her business philosophy.
In this memoir/business book, Amoruso, CEO of the Internet clothing store Nasty Gal, offers advice to young women entrepreneurs who seek an alternative path to fame and fortune. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of her suburban childhood and rebellious teen years, the author describes her experiences living hand to mouth, hitchhiking, shoplifting and dropping out of school. Her life turned around when, bored at work one night, she decided to sell a few pieces of vintage clothing on eBay. Fast-forward seven years, and Amoruso was running a $100 million company with 350 employees. While her success is admirable, most of her advice is based on her own limited experiences and includes such hackneyed lines as, “When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too.” At more than 200 pages, the book is overlong, and much of what the author discusses could be summarized in a few tweets. In fact, much of it probably has been: One of the most interesting sections in the book is her description of how she uses social media. Amoruso has a spiritual side, as well, and she describes her belief in “chaos magic” and “sigils,” a kind of wishful-thinking exercise involving abstract words. The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success. Some of the guidance Amoruso offers for interviews (don’t dress like you’re going to a nightclub), getting fired (don’t call anyone names) and finding your fashion style (be careful which trends you follow) will be helpful to her readers, including the sage advice, “You’re not special.”
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection or insight.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16927-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier...
A moving record of Didion’s effort to survive the death of her husband and the near-fatal illness of her only daughter.
In late December 2003, Didion (Where I Was From, 2003, etc.) saw her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, hospitalized with a severe case of pneumonia, the lingering effects of which would threaten the young woman’s life for several months to come. As her daughter struggled in a New York ICU, Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, suffered a massive heart attack and died on the night of December 30, 2003. For 40 years, Didion and Dunne shared their lives and work in a marriage of remarkable intimacy and endurance. In the wake of Dunne’s death, Didion found herself unable to accept her loss. By “magical thinking,” Didion refers to the ruses of self-deception through which the bereaved seek to shield themselves from grief—being unwilling, for example, to donate a dead husband’s clothes because of the tacit awareness that it would mean acknowledging his final departure. As a poignant and ultimately doomed effort to deny reality through fiction, that magical thinking has much in common with the delusions Didion has chronicled in her several previous collections of essays. But perhaps because it is a work of such intense personal emotion, this memoir lacks the mordant bite of her earlier work. In the classics Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979), Didion linked her personal anxieties to her withering dissection of a misguided culture prey to its own self-gratifying fantasies. This latest work concentrates almost entirely on the author’s personal suffering and confusion—even her husband and daughter make but fleeting appearances—without connecting them to the larger public delusions that have been her special terrain.
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier writing.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4314-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
