Not a comprehensive manual on end-of-life issues, but a decent reference for couples, especially valuable for older readers...
Part checklist, part memoir, this nonfiction book offers practical advice to help prepare for the loss of a spouse.
When Post learned that her husband had a terminal illness, both of them felt blindsided by the news. In their struggle to cope with his diagnosis and quick decline, they avoided talking about the practical, day-to-day issues of life without a partner. After he passed away, she regretted not having those conversations—particularly when the toilet flooded and she realized she didn’t know where to find the water shut-off valve. To prevent other couples from experiencing the same frustrations amid their heartbreak, Post wrote this book, her debut, which offers general advice and lists alongside entries from her journal and her personal recollections of her husband’s final months. The book engages readers from the beginning, especially in the introduction, where Post warmly invites readers to “use the ideas in this book as your permission and your incentive to approach these subjects with your partner.” She goes on to discuss financial assets and liabilities, wills, estate planning, funerals, burials, hospice care and more, including the emotional challenges of living without a spouse. Post writes in a friendly, conversational tone that makes difficult topics seem less overwhelming. However, a few sections rely more on anecdotes than facts, making the book feel less like a guide and more like a memoir—a style that may win over some readers while alienating others. Many of Post’s stories and comments are geared toward senior citizens, and a handful of her suggestions appear a bit dated, from Chapter 3’s gender-specific breakdown of unfamiliar household tasks (home maintenance for widows, cooking for widowers) to the chart of average funeral costs last updated in 2009. But while Post’s specific experiences may not be universally relatable, they could prove quite comforting to readers going through a similar situation.
Not a comprehensive manual on end-of-life issues, but a decent reference for couples, especially valuable for older readers and caregivers.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490575452
Page Count: 164
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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