With interesting stories and a broad canvas, Hotz connects readers to a different way of thinking about health and wellness.
How a holistic approach to health can make a world of difference to those in need.
Most developed nations are experiencing epidemics of loneliness, depression, and despair, issues that can underpin physical ailments ranging from diabetes to chronic pain. Often, the response of medical professionals is to prescribe drugs, on the assumption that a chemical imbalance is to blame. However, this approach is often misguided, writes Hotz, a “solutions-focused journalist,” in her first book. One alternative is “social prescriptions,” which allow patients to fully communicate what matters to them and what makes them happy. This is not a new idea: Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, pointed to the link between mind and body more than 2,000 years ago. Over the centuries, that message got lost in the jargon of pharmaceutical-based, technology-heavy medicine. It is now making a resurgence, and the common components are movement, rediscovery of nature, art, service to others, and a sense of belonging to a compassionate community. It can mean joining a cycling or birdwatching club, learning to dance, or taking up a volunteering role. The actual activity is often less important than involvement with an activity that is satisfying and positive. Hotz provides illustrative case studies and examines research that supports the approach, noting that in several countries, it has been successfully integrated into the broader health system. In the U.S., she notes, big pharma and the complexity of medical insurance are significant obstacles—though progress is occurring. “Instead of replacing other kinds of medicine, social prescriptions complement them, offering healing that pills and procedures can’t offer alone,” she writes. “Instead of just treating symptoms of sickness, social prescriptions reconnect us to our sources of wellness.”
With interesting stories and a broad canvas, Hotz connects readers to a different way of thinking about health and wellness.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781668030332
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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