A fine memoir that offers an inspiring reminder of the qualities one needs to overcome life’s greatest challenges.
An autobiographical account of a police officer’s recovery from paralyzing injuries suffered in the line of duty.
Roy always wanted to be a cop. He grew up in a dangerous neighborhood where the police “reminded [him] of superheroes,” and unlike many other boys his age, he stayed out of trouble. Specifically, he pursued his interest in baseball with a stint in the minor leagues, and later achieved his dream of becoming a police officer in Houston. By his early 30s, he’d received several meritorious service awards, was making good money, and was happily raising his first child with the love of his life. Life was good—but that changed in an instant when a routine traffic stop turned into a harrowing, high-speed chase, resulting in catastrophic spinal and brain injuries. Roy called it déjà vu: Seventeen years before, he’d been in an auto accident and “narrowly escaped death….I wasn’t sure if I’d be so fortunate again.” Paraplegic and unable to care for himself, Roy “was at zero, the lowest point of any measuring scale,” despite the support of family, friends, fellow police officers and others in the community. However, when the hospital assigned him a young, seemingly angelic roommate named Damian, Roy found new hope and strength in the friendship, and a series of success stories followed: Roy won a legal battle to secure disability benefits, recovered the use of his legs enough to complete his first footrace, and returned to Lakewood Church, where he learned to let go of his resentment. Overall, this is a delightful memoir—well-organized and cogently written, personal and engaging without being maudlin, and inspirational without being preachy. The author introduces each chapter with a Bible verse that reinforces the chapter’s main point, and his stories offer hope and instruction, particularly for readers facing similar challenges. Roy’s voice reflects a rare, refreshing blend of humility, wisdom, encouragement and gratitude, undoubtedly born of his strong faith being tested by adversity.
A fine memoir that offers an inspiring reminder of the qualities one needs to overcome life’s greatest challenges.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490832081
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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