A provocative guide that could embolden those with substantial debt to pursue evasive action; some consumers may not be...
An audacious playbook focuses on absolving one’s debts.
This instructional book by Newbery (Burn Zones: Playing Life’s Bad Hands, 2015), who wangled his way out of $26 million of debt, could be a panacea for the millions of Americans owing large sums of money. The author’s “debt cleanse” plan is described in considerable detail, both as it pertains to overall strategy and to specific forms of obligations. At the heart of the proposal is a notion some consumers may find unsettling: Newbery recommends, rather bluntly, to “stop paying every debt you have.” He couples this with additional advice that could be regarded as surprising, if not financially controversial: Move assets out of one’s name, “ignore creditors,” dispute debts “even if you owe them,” and “welcome lawsuits.” The author applies this basic methodology to the most common forms of debt consumers face, devoting a chapter each to mortgages, vehicle loans, student loans, business loans, secured personal loans, credit cards and unsecured personal loans, medical bills, payday loans, and collection accounts. Every chapter is written in perky, consumer-friendly language, detailing a step-by-step approach to either settling a debt “for pennies on the dollar” or not resolving it at all. The 25 steps in the chapter on vehicle loans, for example, are characterized as “Mile One,” “Mile Two,” and so on; Mile Eleven is “Get an Attorney in Your Pit,” while Mile Twenty-One is “Try to Find the Middle Road.” Regardless of the type of debt, the overarching theme is that, rather than be intimidated by creditors, the consumer should use every means available to delay or avoid paying it off. As a testament to this approach, the author boasts “over 900 deficiencies, document requests, interrogatories, requests for admissions, deposition questions, and letter templates” in a final section of “action tools” that may have some readers playing amateur attorney. Thankfully, the book includes a levelheaded chapter that discusses how, after ridding oneself of crushing bills, to strive for a debt-free life.
A provocative guide that could embolden those with substantial debt to pursue evasive action; some consumers may not be comfortable with the volume’s unconventional, sometimes confrontational approach.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61961-322-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Community Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of...
Everything you ever wanted to know about America’s favorite Mafia serial—and then some.
New York magazine TV critic Seitz (Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion, 2015, etc.) and Rolling Stone TV critic Sepinwall (Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion, 2017, etc.) gather a decade’s worth of their smart, lively writing about New Jersey’s most infamous crime family. As they note, The Sopranos was first shot in 1997, helmed by master storyteller David Chase, of Northern Exposure and Rockford Files renown, who unveiled his creation at an odd time in which Robert De Niro had just appeared in a film about a Mafioso in therapy. The pilot was “a hybrid slapstick comedy, domestic sitcom, and crime thriller, with dabs of ’70s American New Wave grit. It is high and low art, vulgar and sophisticated.” It barely hinted at what was to come, a classic of darkness and cynicism starring James Gandolfini, an actor “obscure enough that, coupled with the titanic force of his performance, it was easy to view him as always having been Tony Soprano.” Put Gandolfini together with one of the best ensembles and writing crews ever assembled, and it’s small wonder that the show is still remembered, discussed, and considered a classic. Seitz and Sepinwall occasionally go too Freudian (“Tony is a human turd, shat out by a mother who treats her son like shit”), though sometimes to apposite effect: Readers aren’t likely to look at an egg the same way ever again. The authors’ interviews with Chase are endlessly illuminating, though we still won’t ever know what really happened to the Soprano family on that fateful evening in 2007. “It’s not something you just watch,” they write. “It’s something you grapple with, accept, resist, accept again, resist again, then resolve to live with”—which, they add, is “absolutely in character for this show.”
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of them.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3494-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An exhaustive and exhausting marriage of Austen's Pride and a modern reader’s analysis of it.
A mammoth edition, including the novel, illustrations, maps, a chronology, and bibliography, but mostly thousands of annotations that run the gamut from revealing to ridiculous.
New editions of revered works usually exist either to dumb down or to illuminate the original. Since its appearance in 1813, Austen's most famous work has spawned numerous illustrated and abridged versions geared toward younger readers, as well as critical editions for the scholarly crowd. One would think that this three-pounder would fall squarely in the latter camp based on heft alone. But for various other reasons, Shapard's edition is not so easily boxed. Where Austen's work aimed at a wide spectrum of the 19th-century reading audience, Shapard's seems geared solely toward young lit students. No doubt conceived with the notion of highlighting Austen's brilliance, the 2,000-odd annotations–printed throughout on pages facing the novel's text–often end up dwarfing it. This sort of arrangement, which would work extremely well as hypertext, is disconcerting on the printed page. The notes range from helpful glosses of obscure terms to sprawling expositions on the perils awaiting the character at hand. At times, his comments are so frequent and encyclopedic that one might be tempted to dispense with Austen altogether; in fact, the author's prefatory note under "plot disclosures" kindly suggests that first-time readers might "prefer to read the text of the novel first, and then to read the annotations and introduction." Those with a term paper due in the morning might skip ahead to the eight-page chronology–not of Austen's life, but of the novel's plot–at the back. In the end, Shapard's herculean labor of love comes off as more scholastic than scholarly.
An exhaustive and exhausting marriage of Austen's Pride and a modern reader’s analysis of it.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-9745053-0-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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