A wide-ranging collection of essays centering on the author’s Italian family members.
Iodice (Future Shock 2.0, 2014, etc.) begins his book with the life story of his mother-in-law, Giovannina, who survived a Spanish flu epidemic and two world wars on the island of Ponza. His father Silvio’s story was similarly linked with major historical events and twists of fate; for example, Silvio arrived in New York City the day after the cataclysmic stock market crash of 1929. As the author reveals, his father went on to save a young man’s life twice in the same night and also formed an unlikely friendship with two captains of industry that lasted a lifetime. In “The Night of the French Fries,” Iodice recounts an amusing adventure he had with his brother Ralph, in which their mother, Lucia, covered for them after they broke the rules. Additionally, he reflects upon the nature of leadership, analyzing the traits of such famous figures as Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Oprah Winfrey and Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout, Iodice demonstrates a clean, accessible writing style. His extensive profile of legendary performer Mario Lanza, for example, is quite informative, although Iodice’s unabashed enthusiasm may be too much for some readers: “I…imagine that at God’s side is the Emperor of all tenors who entertains him with his magical tones of power and sweetness that captures the divineness of the angels, the force of the wind and the warmth of the sun.” In a nice touch, he also includes an ode to pesto, along with his own personal recipe. The book concludes with 140 pages of quotations, helpfully divided into categories such as faith, friendship and gratitude; there’s something for everyone here, including potentially inspiring words from Confucius, Mohandas Gandhi, singer LaToya Jackson and former first lady Barbara Bush.
Remarkable stories of love, sacrifice and survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500432706
Page Count: 684
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2014
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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