A sympathetic, solid guidebook on the difficulties of caregiving.
An informative, practical guide to caring for a dying loved one.
As Abbott notes in this slim but useful book, U.S. census figures predict that 20 percent of the country’s population will be over the age of 65 by 2020. The author’s primary focus, however, is on those who care for the elderly, as they also need psychological, emotional and often financial support. He notes that “currently unpaid caregivers—typically family members—provide approximately 90 percent of the long-term care and this percentage is unlikely to decline in the future.” Drawing on his own experiences caring for elderly parents, he offers caregivers everyday advice on how to handle this final and perhaps most difficult stage of life. He begins by dissecting the ways caregivers approach death, encouraging readers to identify themselves as deniers, anticipators or emoters (who find “emotional significance in almost every event”). Abbott acknowledges the pros and cons of each approach and the ways in which they may conflict with the personality of the person who’s dying. This consideration seems obvious to a degree, but as the author notes, caregiving is not always as easy as it appears. The caregiver juggles many balls at once, and Abbott writes that it’s essential for them to know what sort of people they are. He notes that one of the biggest challenges they face is balancing the things they control—such as a loved ones’ finances or personal effects—with the things they don’t, particularly if a loved one becomes increasingly obstinate or struggles with depression and dementia. By the author’s own admission, the book is not scientific; there are few studies or quotes from experts, and at times, more references may have been helpful. The sections on the difficulty of navigating Medicaid, for instance, are intriguing, but a broader portrait of the various types of financial help available might have been useful. That said, many chapters provide caregivers with concrete, empathetic suggestions on how to protect their loved ones and themselves.
A sympathetic, solid guidebook on the difficulties of caregiving.Pub Date: April 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469985695
Page Count: 90
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
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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