by Erwin Lazaro ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 24, 2017
This absorbing book delivers honest, if rambling, personal reflections.
A debut memoir chronicles one man’s journey of self-discovery in the late 1990s.
Lazaro begins his account in adulthood, with the author feeling that something was not quite right with his life. He had a good job as an architect, friends whom he could trust, a family he loved beyond words and generally was “doing alright,” and yet something seemed to be bothering him. Before exploring what that thing might be, readers are transported to the author’s childhood. There are musings about his abusive second-grade teacher, his love of table tennis, and, later on, his choice to study architecture instead of electrical engineering as his father advocated. Eventually the story returns to 1998 and Lazaro’s sudden decision to embark on a road trip. He planned to drive south from Washington state along U.S. 101 and eventually meet a friend in San Francisco. Along the way, there would be one-man singalongs, stops for food, and ample introspection. He purchased a camcorder at one point and recorded a great deal of his opinions and actions. The author argues that thinking out loud allowed him to focus. As he asserts while visiting Indian Beach, Oregon: “I’m being honest with myself and seek to unravel my obscure personal truth.” That “obscure personal truth” comes in waves that can be overwhelming at times. Bowel movements are explained (“I eat. I poop.”), and the author refers to himself as a “spoiled brat” on more than one occasion. The reader may not need to know about the excrement, yet it is in the potent sincerity of it all that the memoir strikes a chord. The author’s memories may meander back and forth from childhood to his family to the present day, but whether such ruminations produce tears, gratefulness, or excitement, he doesn’t hold back. And in the final pages, events become oddly and enticingly action oriented. Any initial impression that the work is going to consist solely of a man talking to himself while on a trip from Washington to California is enjoyably shattered.
This absorbing book delivers honest, if rambling, personal reflections.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 221
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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