Practical steps and emotional support with a healthy dose of tough love.
A no-nonsense handbook to help women who struggle to make their voices heard in the workplace.
Inspired by the popular marketing class she teaches at the University of Cincinnati, Sojka has translated her award-winning Women in Sales course into a book that can be shared with a wider audience. The goal—to help working women rid themselves of habits that do not serve them and replace them with ones that do—is broken down into four parts. The first has readers identify “self-limiting behaviors,” like perfectionism and people-pleasing, that are often practiced unconsciously. Part 2 explores eight resilience strategies that readers can employ to build confidence, such as setting a literal “timer on the pity party” and knowing when to quit. In Part 3, readers learn about small changes they can make to improve confidence, like eliminating hedge phrases (such as “I think,” “I feel,” “maybe,” “perhaps,” “kind of,” and “almost”). Lastly, the author provides suggestions for helping to lift up other women to create a healthy, supportive network. Each chapter includes reflection questions and practice sections, accompanied by blank lines where readers can fill in their own thoughts and answers. With a clear and articulate narrative voice, Sojka blends statistics with anecdotes to make her points. While the tone remains supportive throughout, the author isn’t afraid to call out some hard truths—such as the underlying reason why “busyness” is so often a distractor: “sometimes pursuing a passion or calling is hard. It is painful and it hurts, but you know that’s where you’re supposed to be. And busyness gives you a temporary escape.” This kind of soul-searching, combined with exercises that readers can immediately dive into, makes for a motivating and uplifting self-help book. The skillful balance of actionable tools and warm words of encouragement results in an inspirational rallying cry for women everywhere.
Practical steps and emotional support with a healthy dose of tough love.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781947603738
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Univ. of Cincinnati
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
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