A cogent and useful elaboration on a famous concept that advocates group support.
A motivational manual focuses on a key idea from the writings of a self-help guru.
The latest nonfiction work by Horowitz (Awakened Mind, 2019, etc.), like all the other entries in the Napoleon Hill Success Course series, takes as its starting point one particular concept from the oeuvre of the bestselling motivational author of the early 20th century and builds on it. In Horowitz’s case, the idea that forms the center of his book is the “Master Mind,” without which, Hill asserted, no lasting success is possible. Like many of Hill’s major concepts, the notion of the Master Mind is deceptively simple: It’s the gathering of a small group of cognoscenti in some field or endeavor with the aim of sharing ideas and encouraging and assisting one another with specific or general goals. Horowitz stresses in his text the main benefit of this that Hill emphasized nearly a century ago: the pooling of intelligence and experience taking place outside of formal business or organizational structures. This basic concept is mirrored in many later business manuals as the forging of alliances, but Horowitz underscores what Hill highlights, which is the deeper and more personal nature of the Master Mind. The members of Horowitz’s own such band (convened mostly electronically, over time zones and great distances), for instance, share “supportive natures, good humor, and spiritual values.” In clear, concise chapters of invitingly frank prose very much in the manner of Hill himself, Horowitz outlines some practices and procedures for establishing and running a Master Mind, and readers inside and outside of the business world should find these pointers intriguing. But throughout, the author stresses that the operation is as uncomplicated as the idea—and can have payoffs far in excess of the investments in time and energy. To make this point, Horowitz cites the testimony of his Master Mind partner Mel Bergman: “Whenever two or more likeminded people get together, you have a Master Mind group. It’s that simple. Really. If you can suspend your disbelief and give it a shot, it is inconceivable that you will not see results.”
A cogent and useful elaboration on a famous concept that advocates group support.Pub Date: March 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72251-014-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: G&D Media
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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