A wide-ranging and challenging guide to wellness.
Debut author and nurse practitioner Williamson, with co-author Brown, encourages practices to promote better health in every facet of life in this self-help work.
As a sufferer of chronic medical conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, since she was young, Williamson never felt like she received satisfactory answers about easing her problems until Dr. Dan Kalb finally asked her about her diet. Her ensuing wellness journey inspired this “commonsense guide to total restoration.” In the book’s first part, Williamson walks readers through potential causes of physical and mental problems; she’s particularly vocal about items that cause inflammation and encourages readers to consider the ongoing effects of difficult childhood experiences. The second part presents the author’s recommendations, strategies, warnings, and encouragement for readers to learn how to “eat well,” “sleep well,” “move well,” “poop well,” “de-stress well,” and “commune well.” She examines seven food elements that can cause problems in some people, including gluten, dairy, and corn, and offers tips on eating healthy on a tight budget and getting exercise. She also encourages readers to get rid of stressful life elements, or “soul suckers,” by setting boundaries. In addition, she references theories from other researchers, such as Carol Dweck’s Fixed versus Growth Mindset, which Williamson says is essential to successfully living “wild and well.” This guide to healthy living is certainly thorough, by any measure, and there are ample references and resources for further reading for the curious. She frequently references her Christian faith and her reliance on God, but she effectively stresses that it’s necessary for every person to put in the work that’s required to improve one’s life. As noted, Williamson has a background as a nurse, but what shines through in the book are the solutions she’s found for her own challenges, which take steps beyond common and conventional medical approaches.
A wide-ranging and challenging guide to wellness.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63195-560-0
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
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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