A potential source of comfort for those who’ve recently lost a loved one.
This guide to grieving, based on debut author Augenthaler’s own experience of becoming a young widow, aims to give readers hope for their future.
The author’s 45-year-old husband, Jim, unexpectedly died in her arms of an aortic aneurysm, and her journey through grief inspired her to leave a career in the financial industry to become a psychotherapist. This guide is designed for readers who’ve lost loved ones, and it will particularly appeal to those who’ve lost a spouse. Augenthaler begins each chapter with an epigraph from a well-known poet, such as Rumi or Edna St. Vincent Millay, followed by a personal essay recounting a moment during her own grieving experience. She follows each memoir portion with an explanation of the healing process reflected in the anecdote. At one point, she tells of having unusual premonitions before Jim’s death, and she says that this is a common occurrence, especially in the case of sudden deaths. There are complete poems, including some by the author, interspersed throughout that also deal with mourning. An appendix for readers who want to help others includes essential advice on what to say to someone who’s just experienced loss, as well as how to offer assistance in a way that isn’t intrusive or inappropriate. Although grief-related memoirs are common, what sets this one apart is the inclusion of explanations for very specific aspects of the grieving process; for example, the author writes that it’s common to remember the moment that a loved one dies with crystal clarity, but also to forget many details from days or weeks immediately afterward. Some passages, such as an explanation of anxiety and panic attacks, lack citations, which would have been helpful for readers who might want to do further research.
A potential source of comfort for those who’ve recently lost a loved one.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73202-330-7
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Everystep Publications
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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