by John Gregory Vincent ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2013
A breezy, appealing self-help guide.
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Vincent’s self-help debut challenges readers to find peace in a focused, “one-life approach to living.”
The author had a 20-year career in the U.S. Navy and personal battles with divorce, debt and alcoholism before he became a keynote speaker, productivity expert and inspirational author. He’s a firm believer that “almost every influence in our lives encourages us to be anything but unique,” and in this book, he offers a series of questions and life lessons to help the reader find his or her purpose. “One-size-fits-all fits no one,” he asserts. Early on, he suggests that readers build lists of their skills (“combination[s] of experience and knowledge”) and their talents (“the innate abilities that allow you do things well the first time you do them”) and use these lists to help figure out their “unique potential.” In other chapters, he explores the importance of accountability and communication in interpersonal situations, preaches prioritization over “balance,” provides “the critical fundamental basics of nutrition” and introduces the idea of “moving with purpose” to keep one’s body as fit as one’s life. He points out that he isn’t attempting to provide “a guide to Nirvana”; instead, he aims to highlight “common threads in people who seemed to have found happiness, success, and a peace of mind.” The author prefaces most chapters with quotations from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the biggest influences in his own life, but the philosophical reach of his book is vast, using ideas previously proposed by psychologist Carl Jung, author Stephen R. Covey and the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. Indeed, the author borrows so liberally from other self-help tomes that when he offers the equation “event + reaction = outcome,” he can’t say for certain where he came across it—although he thinks he saw it in Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen’s Chicken Soup for the Soul (1993). “I write like I think, a bit all over the place at times,” he admits, but his conversational tone and easygoing sense of humor make such moments come off as endearing rather than distracting.
A breezy, appealing self-help guide.Pub Date: July 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615773445
Page Count: 158
Publisher: John Gregory Vincent
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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