A solid self-help work containing informed advice for living.
A self-help guide that presents readers with a five-year plan to become more active and actualized.
Management consultant DeCosta’s book opens by encouraging readers to visualize their futures as if they were DVDs featuring each aspect of their lives, from personal relationships to career milestones to day-to-day quality of life. It uses this metaphor to illustrate how one can take a more active leadership role in one’s life decisions. The book is divided into four parts, each prefaced with quotes from famous figures, such as Muhammad Ali and Mark Twain. Its overall thesis is that when people don’t have fully realized plans, they allow outside events to bully them and make them unhappy. The book provides detailed, nuanced examples of how to reverse such crippling thought patterns. In chapters such as “Welcome the Critic,” the author encourages readers to stop rejecting the commentaries and judgments of others and instead learn how to embrace constructive criticism. He ably imparts the book’s lessons in taut prose, as when he writes of his former boss: “[W]hen I screwed up, he let me know how and why.” In a pleasing bit of symmetry, he closes with a revamped metaphor, encouraging readers to imagine a classroom of 30 different potential future versions of themselves: “[N]one of them have superpowers, nor are they a member of the Royal Family of England, and none of them are on a reality television show.” This relatable illustration deflates the starry-eyed quality of many other self-help books. Overall, DeCosta’s pragmatism and punchy prose make this book an enjoyable, inspiring read.
A solid self-help work containing informed advice for living.Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494388805
Page Count: 152
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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