A retread of themes and content explored in his previous book, mainly of interest to fans of Grazer’s work.
The award-winning Hollywood producer recounts how his skill in effectively making human connections has directly contributed to his successful career and home life.
In this upbeat though somewhat redundant follow-up to his previous book, A Curious Mind (2015), Grazer takes readers on a loose anecdotal journey through his life and career highlights, sparked by many memorable personal encounters. As a young boy struggling with the limitations and awkwardness of undiagnosed dyslexia, Grazer came to realize that books and classroom study weren’t going to provide his ideal path for learning. Instead, acquiring the ability to form meaningful human connections, starting with direct eye contact, would ultimately provide the results he desired. “To this day, connecting with people is still how I learn best,” writes the author. “More than that, it has become a central practice in every aspect of my life….It is my secret to getting things done, reaching my goals, and feeling energized and empowered. It’s how I thrive, how I grow, how I feel fulfilled, and how I feel purpose. Without doubt, I would not have the life I have today if I didn’t make the effort to genuinely connect with others.” Grazer goes on to describe the particulars of these many encounters, including the inspiring lessons he learned from master communicators such as Oprah Winfrey; his efforts building trust with temperamental artistic talents like Eddie Murphy, Spike Lee, and Eminem; and his methods for overcoming his anxiety about public speaking. Grazer is an amiable storyteller, and his reasoning can be persuasive. However, his examples too often cast a light on his achievements as a Hollywood insider rather than being relatable. As an influential film and TV producer, the odds are stacked in his favor that most individuals would want to interact with him. Here, he rarely summons up more common obstacle examples that would affect an average Joe.
A retread of themes and content explored in his previous book, mainly of interest to fans of Grazer’s work.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4772-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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