A set of thoughtful, manageable destressing techniques that’s presented in a refreshingly straightforward manner.
Psychologist Bullis presents a concise handbook about maximizing coping skills in situations that cause anxiety.
The author, who has 25 years of experience as a therapist, uses composite and anonymized case studies to lay out how the elements of a well-known cycle—wanting to feel in control, being unable to do so, becoming morestressed, and again desiring control—can be interrupted. He presents suitable actions one can take, successfully illustrating how one can manage overwhelming anxiety and confounding obstacles. Each of the chapters features a story highlighting one person’s specific difficulties, followed by their learning process as they address them; these skills are the focus of exercises at the end of each chapter. Techniques are broken down into easy, manageable steps, which is particularly helpful in potentially confusing situations. Bullis’ advice and activities will be useful to those dealing with daily stresses, as well as with major events, such as illness, disability, or job loss. The book’s simple emphasis is on creating a plan and following through on implementing it. Some sections feel more perfunctory than others; every reader has already heard the dictum that “life is a journey,” for instance. For the most part, though, the author avoids clichés and instead provides useful assertions, such as “In the end we want to live a life with the fewest regrets possible and to feel we have fulfilled our true potential.” The book provides practical tips and effective exercises; one can read the first half for action-oriented help and the second half for more context about grief, adaptation, hope, and persistence. Overall, it’s likely to be a solid resource for its target audience; families facing major life changes, in particular, will appreciate its logic and wisdom.
A set of thoughtful, manageable destressing techniques that’s presented in a refreshingly straightforward manner.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1982279295
Page Count: 172
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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