A timely reminder to appreciate the awe-inspiring everyday wonders flourishing all around us.
How and why the sensations of awe create deeply memorable moments in modern life.
In this insightful report, Keltner—a psychology professor and director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California and author of Born To Be Good and The Power Paradox—parlays his two-decade career teaching the nuances of happiness into a focused guide to discovering awe and bliss in the human experience. Through stories from a wide variety of careers, callings, situations, and perspectives, the author explores the kind of deeply embedded first-person spiritual and emotional truths that “science simply cannot capture.” These anecdotes include his own brush with the enduring grief of losing his younger brother, who had colon cancer and died via assisted suicide, an event the inspired him to write this book. Keltner identifies four recognizable aspects, or “stories,” of awe. In early chapters, the author probes scientific and theoretical viewpoints, and he examines how awe is defined and measured, why it occurs, and the methods uniquely exhibited by individuals who experience it. This research is bolstered by Keltner’s firm belief in the eight wonders of life, which include simple gifts like collective effervescence (“human waves of awe”), nature, music, personal epiphanies, and the marvels of life and death. Most compelling are the personal stories, which demonstrate a fascinating assortment of opinions and perspectives on what people individually consider awe-inspiring. The author’s interest in restorative justice brought him to San Quentin State Prison, where inmates shared the things that bring them awe from behind bars as well as how music, visual art, and nature contribute to stress-relieving, growth-inducing sensations. Through his work as an expert in the science of goodness and human emotions, Keltner ably renders these transformative, defining moments with illuminative prose and encouragement for readers seeking their own awe-inspired deliverance.
A timely reminder to appreciate the awe-inspiring everyday wonders flourishing all around us.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781984879684
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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