A fresh take on well-being with clear, easy-to-follow self-help elements.
Barney, a successful educational entrepreneur and founder of the Prometheus Foundation, tells how a near-death experience led him to investigate what happiness is and how to achieve it.
The author opens his book with an account of when he was a passenger on a Delta Airlines flight in which an engine exploded shortly after takeoff from Reno, Nevada. Eerie silence ensued, and the author’s thoughts turned toward his loved ones, and his gratitude that they were in his will. He envisioned them in a “formal, cold meeting,” he says, listening as his last will and testament was read to them by an attorney. Thinking about this grim scene, he realized that he “didn’t like this picture one bit. There had to be a better way”; he wanted to see the most important people in his life “experience the pleasure and happiness” of his bequests while he was still alive. He then shares how he created and conducted what he ultimately coins the “Happiness Experiment,” in which he offered money—not bequests, but what he calls “pre-quests”—to his loved ones with explicit directions that they work with a Happiness Coach and create a Happiness Plan; this, he says, would ensure that they spend their funds in ways that bring them true joy. With each pre-quest, he revised his ideas about joy, ultimately learning that “the way to achieve real, lasting happiness is through values and virtues.” Backed by the author’s own expertise in Aristotelian thought and his work in education, this book clearly provides readers with intriguing concepts about happiness, taking off from the notion that “few people take enough time to think about what would make them happier [and] few intentionally create a plan to pursue it.” The “Lives Transformed” portion, which shows the impact that his experiment had on his loved ones’ lives, is particularly compelling. Throughout, the author’s inclusion of conversations with his business partner makes his thoughts easy to follow. An accompanying workbook and pre-quest guide effectively provide further explanation and an action plan.
A fresh take on well-being with clear, easy-to-follow self-help elements.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9798886452891
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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