Charmingly amusing yet seriously enlightening advice.
A guide pays tribute to those with gumption.
Many Yiddish words do not translate perfectly into English because they carry nuances that are not always easy to define. Chutzpah is one of them. While widely recognized, chutzpah can have either positive or negative connotations depending on how it is used to describe the actions of an individual. According to Harris, “Chutzpah is a blend of personality traits and learned skills that combine to provide exceptional results.” He cleverly utilizes the word to form an acronym wrought with meaning: Each letter represents an area in a behavioral “model.” For example, C stands for “Carpe Diem” (Latin for “seize the moment”), a foundational pillar of CHUTZPAH, writes Harris. He relates a few intriguing anecdotes to illustrate carpe diem, including how he met his wife and how a simple note led to the acquisition of a company. H (“Handling Objections”), U (“Uncovering Need, Pain, and Opportunity”), and the rest of the letters follow suit. Harris clearly had to stretch his creativity to come up with Z (“Z is for Zigzag: Video Gaming and Life”). What makes the concept work, though, is the author’s liberal treatment of both the word chutzpah and the richness of context he derives from it. The areas associated with the eight letters in the word are common to other self-help works, but Harris manages to combine just enough good-natured humor with engaging anecdotes and folksy advice to make the book both enjoyable to read and a learning experience. He even comes up with the occasional verbal gem, referring, for example, to small-business owners as “chutzpahpreneurs.” But there is some serious messaging in the manual’s pages as well. “People who lack chutzpah tend to avoid making decisions,” the author warns. On the other hand, being humble is necessary, advises Harris: “Think of this as quiet chutzpah, the skill of balancing humility and people, not solely ambition.” The author himself has chutzpah: Where else would you find Mother Teresa and Steve Jobs mentioned in the same paragraph?
Charmingly amusing yet seriously enlightening advice.Pub Date: April 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952233-54-8
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Indie Books International
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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