An insightful, accessible guide to feeling good by doing good.
Ideas and exercises for finding stability and meaning in a divisive, destabilizing world.
In the wild year that was 2020, Bryant looked around and realized that Americans were deeply divided. Curious about what happened and how we might realign ourselves, the author started doing the research that would become this book. Bryant trained as a sociologist, but she also has a wealth of experience creating resources used in elementary and secondary social and emotional learning curricula around the world. Part 1 covers working on oneself: fostering self-respect, maintaining intellectual flexibility, learning from negative emotions, and developing other skills that promote lasting happiness. In Part 2, we’re invited to consider that how we treat others affects our own well-being. She describes how people have evolved to cooperate—to give up some personal freedoms in exchange for the benefits of living in a society—and looks at the ways we can enhance our lives by seeking community. Bryant builds upon the first two sections in Part 3, where she explores belief systems spanning the globe and thousands of years of history looking for core moral principles. Each chapter ends with journal prompts—questions like “Have you ever changed a behavior or created a new habit? How did you go about it?” Along the way, Bryant draws from a wide array of resources, from the work of contemporary happiness researchers and evolutionary biologists to Thomas Paine and Confucius. An attempt to address “identity politics,” however, offers a simplistic critique: “Real injustices have happened, and people are reasonable to want that to be acknowledged and corrected. But if the goal is truly to reach our society’s ideals for equality and fairness, we need a different approach that doesn’t wrap people’s identities in a shared sense of suffering.” In its entirety, this is a comprehensive program for creating a healthy culture by creating a healthy self, but Bryant offers an excellent annotated index in case readers need a quick hit of wisdom or a refresher course on a particular topic. And anyone who wants to go deeper can find her sources in the “Notes” section at the end of the book.
An insightful, accessible guide to feeling good by doing good.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 9780984905669
Page Count: 337
Publisher: LoveWell Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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