A useful, highly structured reference book on home organization.
A debut guide tells readers how to arrange their homes.
A disorganized home is a stress on an individual’s space, time, and psyche. The worse the problem gets, the harder it is to try to fix it. “People don’t know where to begin or how to approach organizing,” writes Kempner in her opening chapter. “This book helps to guide you through various organizational tasks by breaking down each task into manageable steps that can be spread out over time.” Employing a minimalist approach to home organization—promoting the belief that less is better and the unnecessary should be eliminated—the author walks readers through the various areas of their dwellings in order to show them how they might be properly sorted, simplified, and freed up for better use. After an introductory section on storage essentials, common challenges, and maintenance strategies, Kempner gets into the specific areas of the house and their particular needs. She tackles bedrooms and closets (including “closet systems”), kitchens (“The Pantry: An Overview”), bathrooms, laundry rooms, home offices, and even the dreaded garages. Each section proposes several alternative templates accommodating whatever spatial situation readers might have to work with. The author includes numerous bulleted lists of tips as well as cute diagrams by debut illustrator Erickson depicting efficient (and aesthetically pleasing) storage techniques. The author writes in an authoritative but calming voice, succinctly anticipating the requirements and instincts of readers: “The most important thing to accomplish with footwear storage design is not to end up storing any loose shoes on the floor, no matter how well they’re initially lined up. Inevitably, order will be lost, and the closet floor will become a mess.” While the book becomes a little dry when read straight through—Kempner does not inject anecdotes or personal experiences into the work, giving it the feel of a true manual—the sections are meant to be consulted out of order according to need. Anyone with a hall closet or kitchen nook that has gotten a little (or more than a little) out of control would do well to see what the author has to say on the subject.
A useful, highly structured reference book on home organization.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 333
Publisher: Yaz Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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