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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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