A passionate, multilayered, and valuable call for readers to embrace their inner superheroes.
A guide offers a plan for unlocking the superhuman through creativity.
“Each of us has innate talents and abilities,” Burlock writes. “These are our superpowers.” The author seeks to help readers recognize and strengthen those skills in their daily lives—with recognition being the first key. Another major key is creativity: Burlock views this as the crucial element in the whole cycle, the “fuel” of the superhuman lifestyle. The moral compass of that regimen is something he calls the “Superhuman Code,” a set of principles composed of six core elements: awareness, humanity, integrity, humility, resilience, and sacrifice. Urging his readers to concentrate on essentials like healthy breathing, personal magnetism, and the restorative process of “rebooting” their minds, the author assures them that this kind of concentration on developing their superpowers is far more useful than “mindlessly scrolling through social media, seeking inspiration and relief in an endless news feed.” Nourish the spirit and mind, pay attention to issues of finance, make time for health and fitness—these are all standard self-help maxims. But Burlock infuses his discussions of them with animated reflections on his own experiences in the design field and on the outlooks and philosophies of the sprawling superhero entertainment world—especially the Marvel cinematic universe. The tone he adopts throughout is a combination of breezy confidence and consistent, outspoken encouragement. He compares his approach with TED Talks, and readers will immediately see the similarities. He views the whole superhuman idea as inextricably linked with the concept of leadership. Underneath its mentions of the Black Panther and the Hulk, the book is essentially a spirited, upbeat plea for readers to be leaders in their own lives. This, too, is familiar ground in motivational literature, but Burlock’s infectious enthusiasm may very well be his own superpower.
A passionate, multilayered, and valuable call for readers to embrace their inner superheroes.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73-577020-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Gold Coast Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 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
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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