A football-themed game plan for personal transformation that’s too wide-ranging and comprehensive for its own good.
Schneider presents a genre-bending nonfiction tome on self-improvement.
The author draws on 50 years of personal experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a professional background as a football coach for this epic self-help guide. The first part of the book is a memoir about growing up in a toxic home environment with his parents and two siblings. “I lived in survival mode with no way out,” the author writes. He began having intrusive thoughts about how to protect his father’s safety while away on business, which led to repetitive counting rituals centered on the number six. The narrative follows him through marriage, fatherhood, and landing his dream job as a football coach. (“On the football field, obsession was no longer a symptom. It was a system.”) When it comes to self-improvement strategies specifically, the author advises readers to “obsess over the right things,” such as preparation, effort, and character. He advocates for self-discipline, which he defines as “an intentional plan that gives obsession purpose and belief structure.” The book outlines “The Character Route Tree” (or nine behavioral paths guided by values): Flat (laying groundwork), Slant (opening up), Comeback (being resilient), Curl (aiming for discipline), Out (getting out of your comfort zone), Dig (uncovering your niche), Corner (validating yourself), Post (taking responsibility), and Go (leaving a legacy). The book elaborates on each route. The book’s final section consists of an “8-5-0” glossary, which includes 850 acronyms that double as bite-size advice, ranging from “ACCEPT: Allow Chaotic Circumstances Everyday Peace Too” to “ZONE: Zealous Optimism Never Ends.” The book concludes with a reminder that “what can be learned here is what can be lived: growth happens in motion, truth arrives in silence, and peace begins where pretending ends.”
Schneider blends personal insight, professional experience, and sports strategy into this unique book. The memoir section offers a detailed depiction of the author’s childhood, coming-of-age, and transition from football player to coach, showing how OCD appeared in each phase of his life. Scenes featuring Schneider’s grandparents and their home are exceptionally vivid; he paints a portrait of a place that “had a pulse of its own. The air was softer there. The quiet carried warmth in every direction. It was the kind of quiet that invited discovery, and I always found something new inside those walls.” The book breaks up the long stretches of storytelling with a variety of formats, such as theatrical scenes, a poem, lists, emails, and photographs. But then the book really becomes more useful to readers in the second and third parts. Pigskin fans will appreciate the football framework throughout, demonstrated in analogies like “Just as wide receivers navigate routes with finesse, building strong character traits requires proper positioning and control.” The strategies are clear and easily implementable. However, at over 700 pages, the book overextends itself. While the memoir is a meticulous catalog of events in the author’s life, it provides few practical takeaways compared to the self-help sections and may frustrate readers seeking actionable advice earlier in the narrative. While the book’s many acronyms can be clever, the excessive use feels performative rather than enlightening. A football-themed game plan for personal transformation that’s too wide-ranging and comprehensive for its own good.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2025
ISBN: 9798218776916
Page Count: 746
Publisher: Giddoff Press
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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