A book of noble, sincere, and expressive advice for living.
A U.S. Navy physician shares his secrets for a more successful life in this self-help work.
Mathurin conceived of his debut book when he realized how critical checklists are in the worlds of naval aviation and medicine. Itemized lists, he says, help avoid flight mishaps and operating room errors, so he wondered, “Why not apply this same concept to people’s lives to help them achieve their highest potential?” That epiphany resulted in this book—a kind of instruction manual for living that breaks achievement into seven “checklist items”: “Goals,” “Take Action,” “Courage to Consistently Commit,” “Value Resources,” “Investing in Yourself and Others,” “Giving Back,” and “Create a Legacy of Service to Others.” An introductory section helpfully explains each of the core concepts, in brief, and these same blocks of text are repeated at the beginning of each of seven chapters. The items themselves are unlikely to be new to most readers, as many of the ideas are common in self-help literature (such as “Have the courage to go the extra mile with everything that you do, each and every time”). But the presentation of the material feels more novel, as the overarching checklist concept isn’t taken literally; the book’s merit derives from the idea that one can systematically address several broad areas in the quest for a fuller life. At the very least, this notion gives the book a highly focused structure that makes it easy for readers to navigate. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s military and medical background, there’s a sense of logic and precision to this book. Each chapter’s content is uniformly positive and always emphasizes proactivity, but it’s also clear that the book isn’t intended to highlight step-by-step procedure. Instead, it offers a wide-ranging, general discussion of each list item, using examples and personal anecdotes to illustrate specific points. To that end, Mathurin writes from a very personal perspective—sharing, for example, how he grew up in poverty in Haiti—and he explains with some eloquence how he used the principles that he lays out in his book to “transform [his] life from famine to abundance.” He writes with a great deal of insight, as well, offering not only accounts of his own experiences, but also the wisdom of others, such as investor Warren Buffett and the late self-help authors Zig Ziglar and Napoleon Hill. Mathurin’s style often takes an inspirational tone, as he exudes a sense of confidence in his approach to life: “Success,” writes Mathurin, “is only ten percent intention and ninety percent action.” About leading others, he writes, “always strive to be the leader you would want to follow; strive to be the calm voice in the midst of the chaos, and—while you are at it—strive to be the change that you want to see.” Finally, Mathurin stresses that you can “lay the path to your legacy by focusing on giving back the acts of kindness you have received along the way.”
A book of noble, sincere, and expressive advice for living.Pub Date: May 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73228-846-1
Page Count: 150
Publisher: 7 CHECKLIST ITEMS LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
