An often inspiring memoir and a meditation on how fate can change one’s life in an instant.
An impressive, inspirational debut memoir that makes a convincing argument for mind-body healing.
McCord arranges his story chronologically, starting with his childhood, but it largely centers on the months following his accidental fall downstairs. The author was left without the use of his limbs, and his fine motor skills were virtually nonexistent. After his initial hospital stay, he was taken to a grueling rehabilitation center where he worked to eventually regain control of over 90 percent of his previous abilities. After much effort, he was able to live independently once again and find gainful employment in a government job. In the climactic final pages, McCord challenges himself and his two sons to climb Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains. The author has a deep interest in spirituality, mind-body awareness and reiki healing that permeates much of the memoir. At one point, he tells of hiring an exorcist, and at another, he discusses his explorations into accessing his “higher consciousness.” He manages to strike the right tone when discussing these subjects, however, by never preaching or proselytizing; rather, he states what he believes to be true. His compelling conviction is difficult to ignore, particularly when he supports it with well-chosen quotes from the Bible and other sources. However, although McCord writes well, his book might have benefited from a stronger edit; the three sections of the memoir—before, during and after his time as a quadriplegic—seem to have been written at different times, with different focuses. The opening chapters describing his background lack finesse, and in later sections, long lists of alleged evidence of paranormal activity slow the story’s momentum.
An often inspiring memoir and a meditation on how fate can change one’s life in an instant.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499537345
Page Count: 250
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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