This manual will help readers jump-start self-improvement efforts, especially those involving public speaking.
A motivational guide offers advice to aspiring public speakers.
Ugelow aims to inspire readers to pursue their professional goals, and, for many, that means enlarging their audiences and promoting their missions through public speaking. The author promises that “anyone who chooses to can spread their message on a bigger scale, to make connections and influence the conversation.” She discusses how readers can manage (rather than try to eliminate) fear in order to move forward. Her “Inner Freedom Framework” involves three steps: repattern habits, restore safety, and reveal and heal. Transformation, she says, requires changes in readers’ everyday behaviors as well as their thoughts. Ugelow also urges readers to let go of envy and the need to be liked, to reframe their past experiences, and to be more curious than critical when approaching a new task. She discusses how to deal with remorse, mistakes, and other glitches that can occur during public speaking, such as not knowing the answer to an audience member’s question. She also suggests that readers respond to online haters with grace. Advice on cultivating a confident presence through meditation and relaxation techniques follows. She includes breathing and vocal exercises so speakers can warm up as well as memorization tools so they can abandon notes. Throughout, she incorporates inspirational quotes from the likes of Rumi and Oprah Winfrey. Ugelow’s voice in this text is akin to a best friend who talks candidly but also plays the part of a cheerleader. She encourages readers in lines like “I’m super-proud of and impressed by you. By reading this book, you took a giant step toward your dreams.” She bravely shares her own professional struggles and will endear herself to readers in the process. Some of the counsel will sound familiar to avid readers of self-help books, including her recommendations to use affirmations, express gratitude more often, and get out of comfort zones. A few exercises veer toward the cringeworthy, such as instructing readers to greet inanimate objects in their environments. Ugelow is more helpful when she taps into her expertise on public speaking, such as providing tailored tips for podcasts and webinars.
This manual will help readers jump-start self-improvement efforts, especially those involving public speaking.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-989603-94-9
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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