A brave, personal book in which the author discovers the best of the self-help industry, despite its many flaws.
The author’s exploration of the world of self-help books and of her own childhood trauma.
Early on in the book, Lamb-Shapiro recounts the time she and her father—a child psychologist and the author of multiple self-help books—attended a seminar for authors of self-help books led by Mark Victor Hansen, one of the authors of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series. In one sense, this chapter represents the book in a nutshell: an exploration of the culture of self-help, what it means to readers and how (and if) it helps, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. “As Americans,” she writes, “self-help reflects our core beliefs: self-reliance, social mobility, an endless ability to overcome obstacles, a fair and equal pursuit of success, and the inimitable proposition that every single human being wants and deserves a sack of cash.” Though not necessarily jaded, the author examines her subject with at least a wearied, cautious uncertainty. Through her father’s work, she’s been on the author/writer side of the equation long enough to be comfortable with pointing her finger at the snake-oil salesmen of the industry, and she takes a look at the seemingly limitless number of products and follow-up seminars one can choose to spend money on. Similarly, Lamb-Shapiro explores the world of The Rules, the late-1990s book/system for “Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.” She finds that, more than anything else, self-help has become an elaborate business with the aim of continuing to expand and make money from countless spinoffs and new products. The other narrative thread concerns the author’s childhood trauma: Lamb-Shapiro’s mother committed suicide when she was very young. As the author dissects these and other self-help systems, finding fault fairly, she also finds it seeping into her approach to grieving that loss and learning more about how her mother died.
A brave, personal book in which the author discovers the best of the self-help industry, despite its many flaws.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4391-0019-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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