A practical and engagingly written guidebook to embodying peace in one’s daily life.
In this self-help book, two experts on personal development highlight ways to practice peace daily.
“Peace is not something we wait for,” life coaches Hamilton-Guarino and Eastman point out in the book’s introduction, adding that it is instead “something we practice—every day, in every interaction, in every breath.” The authors challenge popular misconceptions of peace that relegate it to an abstract ideal, reduce it to passive inaction, or defer its value onto others, and they argue that it begins inside oneself and in one’s interactions with family members, colleagues, and communities. Central to the book’s convincing premise is that peace starts with compassion (“When you commit to practicing compassion,” they write, “you promote peace”), and that actively choosing compassion not only helps bring inner peace, but is also a contribution to global peace movements. As a guidebook, the volume provides pragmatic advice, often in bulleted lists, on how to embrace its central concept, while emphasizing that it requires constant vigilance and patience. A wealth of practical ancillaries includes journaling prompts (included on lined paper throughout the book), real-world exercises to help break an “autopilot cycle” in stressful situations, and prompts for group discussions. There are memoiristic vignettes from the authors’ own lives, as well as inspirational stories contributed by people they’ve encountered as life coaches, licensed therapists, and motivational speakers. Hamilton-Guarino, a bestselling author of nearly a dozen works, joins Eastman, whose academic background is in clinical psychology, for this book; the pair, who previously worked together on Percolate: Let Your Best Self Filter Through (2014), are particularly adept at blending a welcoming, personable writing style with a solid understanding of best practices in contemporary psychology and peace theory that’s backed by scholarly references. Although the authors’ overall goal of a more peaceful world is admirable, they’re also careful to emphasize that the book “doesn’t ask for perfection.” Instead, it effectively encourages readers to contribute to this goal—one small change and action at a time.
A practical and engagingly written guidebook to embodying peace in one’s daily life.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9780757326080
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Health Communications Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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