A collection of photographs and inspirational stories of individuals who have overcome obstacles or worked toward humanitarian causes.
In this debut coffee-table book, Maroney brings together dozens of personal stories, each accompanied by photographs of the narrators and identified with thematic titles—gift, heritage, winning, resolve, etc. Each narrative is a series of sentences beginning with “Imagine...” followed by an element of the narrator’s story: For instance, “Imagine...appreciating what you’ve left behind only after seeing this new and different land,” says a woman who moved back and forth between Japan and the United States. Or “Imagine...standing at a stranger’s door, a can of paint and paintbrush in your hands, hoping they will let you paint their house—for free,” from a man who found new purpose in good deeds after his wife died. Some stories reflect the narrator’s triumph over a difficult past—a teenager who grew up in the foster care system and went on to win a national financial literacy competition, a musician who performs despite being born with cerebral palsy, etc.—while others are more about the individuals’ choices, such as using yoga as the basis for a microfinance operation. A few of the featured individuals have been associated with headline-making events, such as the ER staff who treated the mass-shooting victims in Aurora, Colorado, and a Columbine High School graduate who learned forgiveness. But most share victories on a smaller scale, acclimating to an adopted homeland or touching lives through low-budget philanthropy. While all the contributors’ stories are uplifting, they avoid the clichés of motivational speeches, and the spare prose keeps even the most tragic stories from becoming maudlin. The book is well-designed, too—a simple blue, black and white palette allows the words and pictures to draw the reader’s full attention.
An attractive, compelling collection of stories and photographs related to conquering adversity and imagining vibrant possibilities.
Pub Date: April 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988995109
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Yampa Valley Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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