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DON'T SAVE FOR RETIREMENT

A MILLENNIAL'S GUIDE TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM

A bold, fresh, and thought-provoking guide.

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Contrarian financial advice from a multimillionaire millennial.

In this debut business book, Ameduri, who built a financial advisory business, Future Money Trends, via a YouTube channel and a newsletter, offers the millennial generation a pep talk about financial freedom. The book begins with a frank discussion that puts wealth accumulation into perspective, with the author noting that “money is an important tool…but it is not the end goal.” Rather, he says, one’s priorities should be taking financial control of one’s own life. He urges members of his generation to adopt a “sustainable, frugal mindset” with an emphasis on eliminating debt and cutting expenses. When it comes to specific personal financial strategies, the author leans away from conventional thinking. For example, he suggests that “the majority of the general public has failed miserably” at retirement and that people should “focus on capturing passive income” rather than pursue traditional retirement-savings approaches. In fact, generating such passive income is a centerpiece of Ameduri’s financial plan; to that end, he advocates and explains such tactics as crowdfunding, real estate investment trusts, and residential real estate investment. The author is no fan of typical Wall Street investing, either; instead, he recommends considering investment in micro-cap companies, precious metals, cryptocurrency, and, intriguingly, whole life insurance policies as investment vehicles. Ameduri also views employment by a company as riskier than being a freelancer or independent contractor, suggesting that “everything about the market is pushing us toward independence and sovereignty.” It all adds up to a heady, provocative, and quietly radical worldview of work, money, and personal freedom, and some millennial readers will no doubt find Ameduri’s approach tantalizing. Others, however, may be wary of such nontraditional approaches. Still, the author’s candor is refreshing, and his sweeping, lofty argument is compelling. He’s passionate about his beliefs and writes with panache, and additional, insightful observations by his wife, Jewel, add to the book’s value.

A bold, fresh, and thought-provoking guide.

Pub Date: July 13, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1376-8

Page Count: 196

Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing

Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019

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IN MY PLACE

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

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

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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