A bracing series of strong urgings for more mindful and self-possessed living.
A new decalogue aims at helping 20-something readers to thrive.
Froh opens his guide with an obliging mention of the Ten Commandments before going on to augment them for the present day, this time with the goal of personal thriving. “I can’t promise you admittance into Heaven,” he writes. “But, following the commandments to thrive will set you free to realize your potential, fostering a love for living.” He follows through with the concept by enumerating his own 10 Commandments and explaining them. They fall into three tiers: the personal, the social, and the spiritual. These start off with the personal, with commandments like “Thou Shalt Stay Focused” and “Thou Shalt Live Simply.” The social level follows, with such decrees as “Thou Shalt Be Real” and “Thou Shalt Love Deeply.” And finally, there’s the spiritual tier, which includes things like “Thou Shalt Befriend Nature” and “Thou Shalt Give Thanks.” Throughout his elaborations on these 10 Commandments, he skillfully draws on his own experiences in order to stress the vital importance of maintaining connections with friends and family; exercising a very conscious awareness of how precious time is spent; and, perhaps most important of all, regaining lost focus by making to-do lists and sticking to them. Modern society, he writes, is drowning in a “tsunami of all distractions,” from voicemails and messages to updates and notifications. Expecting to get worthwhile things done while wasting time on these kinds of things, he convincingly maintains, is folly: “Nothing happens when we let things ‘just’ happen.” Froh’s Christianity is front and center throughout his book, but it’s so personally and passionately woven into his advice that nonreligious readers will still find plenty of clear, heartfelt counsel in these pages.
A bracing series of strong urgings for more mindful and self-possessed living.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73755-672-5
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Human Touch Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A handful of pearls amid a pile of empty oyster shells.
Bestselling author Haig offers a book’s worth of apothegms to serve as guides to issues ranging from disquietude to self-acceptance.
Like many collections of this sort—terse snippets of advice, from the everyday to the cosmic—some parts will hit home with surprising insight, some will feel like old hat, and others will come across as disposable or incomprehensible. Years ago, Haig experienced an extended period of suicidal depression, so he comes at many of these topics—pain, hope, self-worth, contentment—from a hard-won perspective. This makes some of the material worthy of a second look, even when it feels runic or contrary to experience. The author’s words are instigations, hopeful first steps toward illumination. Most chapters are only a few sentences long, the longest running for three pages. Much is left unsaid and left up to readers to dissect. On being lost, Haig recounts an episode with his father when they got turned around in a forest in France. His father said to him, “If we keep going in a straight line we’ll get out of here.” He was correct, a bit of wisdom Haig turned to during his depression when he focused on moving forward: “It is important to remember the bottom of the valley never has the clearest view. And that sometimes all you need to do in order to rise up again is to keep moving forward.” Many aphorisms sound right, if hardly groundbreaking—e.g., a quick route to happiness is making someone else happy; “No is a good word. It keeps you sane. In an age of overload, no is really yes. It is yes to having space you need to live”; “External events are neutral. They only gain positive or negative value the moment they enter our mind.” Haig’s fans may enjoy this one, but others should take a pass.
A handful of pearls amid a pile of empty oyster shells.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-14-313666-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin Life
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
