A forthright motivational memoir from a professional motivator.
Debut author Joseph recounts how Christianity guided him during doubtful periods of his professional career in this inspirational remembrance.
The author grew up learning the entrepreneurial spirit from his father, Milton Joseph, a Los Angeles businessman who made millions in various enterprises, including a construction business and a real estate investment firm. His father also taught Joseph failure, however: while the author was in his early 20s, his parents were nearly driven into bankruptcy by poor business decisions. Joseph had expected to follow in his father’s footsteps as a businessman, but instead he became a police officer. He channeled his energy into off-duty martial arts and raising a young family, but Joseph felt unfulfilled until he heard a chance sermon from his Baptist pastor one Sunday: “The sermon he preached was not a message of hope and triumph. It was about the realities of the valleys in your life. I was taken aback by the sermon because it patterned my current state.” Joseph says that he then opened himself to divine guidance, often finding it in the form of friends or strangers who offered him advice or opportunities. He began to build a fitness and martial arts training gym, slowly investing time and money to grow his reputation and client base. Relying on his trust in God and the support of his wife, he sought to avoid the mistakes of his father. Joseph recounts his story in confident, straightforward, and unexpectedly nuanced prose: “I had a moment of doubt in the middle of my good fortune,” he writes. “You might call me a positive pessimist. It means I’d rather think of the worst-case scenario so if something does not go well my emotions would be balanced.” Joseph also recognizes that not everyone is a Christian believer, and so the book is rather light on proselytizing. Joseph can be quite confrontational, as proven by the numerous feuds detailed in the book; whether the reader attributes his success to divine intervention, luck, or hard work, his account surely demonstrates a doggedness that would-be entrepreneurs should note.
A forthright motivational memoir from a professional motivator.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-578-19811-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: CJ's Functional Fitness & Self Defense LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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