A curious blend of political commentary and motivational pep talk.
A motivational work diagnoses the pernicious forces in American society.
The media are scaring Americans on a daily basis, releasing a constant feed of news stories that fill them with anxiety and dread. Hollywood, with its intolerant culture of political correctness, tries to sell citizens its own twisted values. The government has been corrupted by politicians looking to fill their own pockets. They allow drugs to flood the country in order to provide jobs for lawyers and judges. These are just some of the problems facing the United States that Rising (Millennials, America’s Greatness Depends on You!, 2017, etc.) details in this book, which seeks to get to the problem of the collective mental instability of the American public. “My hope is that we can find common ground as collective citizens,” writes the author, “working together to pursue the betterment of our families by discussing ideas to achieve happiness within our mental state of mind.” With this volume, Rising encourages readers to recognize the negative forces that operate on the American psyche, to reject fear and anxiety, and to find strength through a combination of family, faith, self-control, and self-love. This is essential not only for readers’ health as individuals, but also for the survival and the success of the U.S. as a whole. The author writes in an energetic prose full of colorful imagery and figurative language: “Our government has the responsibility to captain the ship, and similar to the sinking of the Titanic, they have rammed us into a psychological iceberg!” While he does not identify with a certain political persuasion, his nostalgia for an earlier time, his propensity for conspiracy theory, and his interest in the Judeo-Christian roots of America present a worldview that many readers will quickly recognize. (He refers to the denizens of Hollywood as “Global Goofballs” and claims, oddly, “It is not irregular for the Hollywood elites to have a child psychiatrist counseling their children on a regular basis.”) His political perspectives sit oddly alongside the language of self-help, as he is forced to reveal that his projected positivity is built on a foundation of animosity.
A curious blend of political commentary and motivational pep talk.Pub Date: June 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-3086-3
Page Count: 152
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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