Engaging and emboldening; a way out for the truly adventurous.
A captivating, contemporary rendition of the get-rich-quick genre that offers an unusual strategy for living life differently.
Of the countless books that promise to increase one’s wealth in a short period of time, most are either a sales pitch for a “system” of some kind or reliant on a one-dimensional approach, such as real estate investing. Robinson’s debut is refreshingly different. This lawyer-turned-entrepreneur shares a shrewd yet uncomplicated plan for “opting out” of a traditional lifestyle through “a series of life hacking strategies.” He follows a tried-and-true formula and weaves his own success story into a self-help guide that neatly lays out his unorthodox plan in three sections: the “Opt Out” philosophy followed by “income pillars” and “expense pillars.” For some, it may be the philosophy that is the hardest to swallow. It requires an unconventional way of thinking, or as Robinson writes, “you no longer define wealth in the terms that society uses,” and you opt out “of the traditional approach to making money and spending money.” The author’s own contrarian story demonstrates how he “opts out” of a traditional livelihood. His accounts of other people following novel, alternative lifestyles are inspiring and enticing. The intriguing philosophy is expanded upon in the second and third parts of the book. Three income pillars—starting a “side gig,” buying or bootstrapping a business, and investing in real estate—are each described in detail. Robinson relies on his own experience, supplemented by the stories of others, to validate his methodology. His side-gig brainstorming ideas and explanations of side-gig requirements, including “low capital outlay” and “low liability, low risk,” are helpful. Robinson acknowledges a higher risk is associated with buying or starting a full-time business, but he shares strategies for doing so with a minimum of cash, such as trading time or using promissory notes. Always the nonconformist, Robinson advises, “Good ideas don’t make good businesses….You don’t need a creative idea. You need a business that is generating cash.” He adds, “You should avoid trying to raise money from investors.” Such statements may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but that is the point, and Robinson makes a convincing case for deviating from the norm. Likewise, the intriguing discussion of real estate investing doesn’t downplay the risks but offers some daring methods of squeezing income out of real estate, such as flipping a house and house swapping. When it comes to the “expense pillars,” the book is no less bold. One of the author’s ideas is scavenging, such as buying furnishings from thrift stores; “I furnished a classy house with classy things,” writes Robinson. There is a certain fascination in observing how Robinson developed his own quirky strategy for becoming a “subversive millionaire,” and he writes with such infectious verve that it is hard not to opt in to his way of thinking. Still, his enthusiasm is breathless at times, and some of his ideas may appeal only to confirmed risk-takers.
Engaging and emboldening; a way out for the truly adventurous.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73228-721-1
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Opt Out, LLC DBA Opt Out Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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