by Carine Colas Diallo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 11, 2014
An inspirational memoir that may leave readers wishing for less resume, more life.
A Haitian-born woman explains how she learned to live without fear in this memoir of her highly successful professional life.
Diallo, who now lives in Florida, was born in Haiti but moved to the U.S. when she was 4 months old. Her memoir gets off to a slow start with a dry account of Haiti’s history, but interest builds when she tells of her father, who worked for the United Nations, and her praying mother, who provided the family its religious foundation. Diallo had a mostly pleasant childhood and was a good student, embarking on a life of learning and earning a master’s degree in international relations and diplomacy. Young women, especially, may enjoy reading about her decision to move to Paris for a one-year study-abroad program. Diallo writes that her Christian faith got her safely through many challenges in life, including early sexual threats, professional trials, frightening situations in dangerous locales across the globe—even the very personal challenge of secondary infertility. She’s clearly had a rich, rewarding life, and her cultural perspective is a unique one. When she married a Muslim man, she had both a religious and a civil ceremony. At the civil ceremony, she made clear she did not approve of polygamy and expected a monogamous marriage—which she got. While the book is generally well-written, its prose sometimes reads like a business report. After having worked with development projects in both Haiti and Africa, Diallo writes of her time in Dinguiraye, Guinea: “I scheduled field visits to assess project results and achievements, and I conducted evaluations of all my staff to determine their strengths and weaknesses and discuss their professional goals and aspirations.” Such writing may be common in the business world, but it’s not stirring in the inspirational market. Also, when she does write about her religious beliefs, she references dreams and visions, making the book perhaps best suited for those of charismatic belief.
An inspirational memoir that may leave readers wishing for less resume, more life.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490861289
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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