Essential protocol for those seeking to hone their apology skills.
How to apologize with grace and sincerity.
Since 2012, Ingall and McCarthy have been analyzing the art of the apology in contemporary pop culture, the news, and politics for their website, SorryWatch.com. This book is a synthesis of their research and the varying perspectives they have chronicled on the site. Even though “good apologies are one of the [life] tools we could all be deploying more,” write the authors, apologizing well is agonizingly difficult for many (most?) grownups.” In conversational prose featuring anecdotal examples, Ingall and McCarthy present six easy-to-follow steps for apologizing effectively. They analyze the many reasons why saying you’re sorry is such a difficult process and present instances where the dynamic power of a resonant “I’m sorry” can create positive change and deepen mutual understanding. They discuss the art of the public apology and how it became “fashionable” for politicians and public figures hoping to save face. They explain how to comprehend why a specific behavior was bad and how to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, and they discuss how to initiate reparations. Throughout, the authors reveal surprising examples of good apologies as well as the neuroscience and psychology behind poor ones—in addition to the things never to say when attempting to right a wrong. Naturally, the bad apologies comprise the text’s juiciest material, and the authors present the five worst celebrity, corporate, and political apologies of all time—e.g., Mark Wahlberg’s vague 1993 apology for hate crimes he committed as a teenager; Harvey Weinstein’s ambiguous response to numerous sexual assault accusations; and Ellen DeGeneres’ issuing nebulous regrets about her toxic work climate. Ingall and McCarthy firmly believe that apologies “civilize” our culture; in making amends for a wrongdoing, they create a happier, more forgiving society, and they offer key teachable moments for children. Closing each chapter are achievable and proactive apology action items for readers eager to do better.
Essential protocol for those seeking to hone their apology skills.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781982163495
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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