A fascinating, multi-voice look at the many aspects of mental health challenges.
Hun presents a series of discussions about different aspects of mental well-being.
This volume is one in a series by the author (the founder of the arts organization ThisConnect) addressing various aspects of mental health. The book opens with a foreword by Dr. William Wan relating a grim statistic: A recent Singapore mental health survey indicates that one in seven people have experienced some form of mental health challenge. As Hun notes at the beginning of this installment, the Covid-19 pandemic helped to move the conversation about mental health into more common parlance, but understanding of the subject is still lacking. In these pages, he presents the transcripts of conversations he’s had with various people affected by mental health issues that touch on many different aspects of the subject, from dealing with the trauma of suicide to underlining the post-Covid-19 importance of human contact, which a public speaker named Simone stresses in one dialogue: “I can’t emphasize it enough that our brains are configured from the time we’re in hunter-gatherer tribes and need connection,” she maintains. “When we’re not connected, things seem overwhelming.” Throughout the book, Hun stresses his belief that the key to navigating even the worst dark periods is perseverance. This attitude is effectively echoed by most of the interview subjects, including art psychotherapist Rachel Yang, who’s one among many to note the “conscious choice” required to make therapy effective.Hun’s decision to present these interviews as dramatic dialogues stripped of a broader narrative is ultimately a wise one; his approach allows the full power of the concepts to take center stage, making for compelling reading. If the personal voices will help readers see themselves in these talks, all the better.
A fascinating, multi-voice look at the many aspects of mental health challenges.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9789815058246
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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