by Neil Rosenthal ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2014
A wise, witty and helpful guide for couples wishing to improve and enliven their romantic connections.
A licensed marriage and family therapist offers his advice on improving intimate relationships.
In his debut book, Rosenthal draws on his experience as a licensed marriage and family therapist and a relationship-advice columnist for the Denver Post. As a nationally recognized expert on intimacy, he provides valuable insights about finding harmony, contentment and passion. He addresses dozens of topics, including how to romance a woman, handle criticism and discover one’s own hidden issues. Other subjects include how to let down one’s guard, communicate when one is angry or hurt, and keep things together during a crisis. He also looks at how to add spark to one’s sex life, even addressing the fine art of erotic talk. Each chapter ends with quotations and quips about relationships, adding sage advice and a lighthearted feel. The author’s selection of quotes reveals the wisdom he’s accumulated over 25 years, such as this example, credited to the late Canadian novelist Robertson Davies: “As a general thing, people marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age when they do not really know what their own kind is.” Rosenthal also quotes from comedian Bob Hope (“People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy”), helpfully reminding couples that they should also keep their senses of humor. There are quizzes to help readers determine whether they are empathetic, good listeners, walled-off, controlling or possibly sabotaging their relationships. There’s also a concluding “Notes” section, with citations of other publications, indexed by chapter and topic. Overall, the guide is informative and entertaining, and the writing, devoid of jargon. Unlike other books in this genre, there’s no attempt here to fit men and women into predetermined categories––just down-to-earth advice. Like a sort of car manual for couples, this is a useful book to consult before (or after) the “check engine” light flickers on a relationship’s dashboard.
A wise, witty and helpful guide for couples wishing to improve and enliven their romantic connections.Pub Date: June 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1460235423
Page Count: 264
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Hajdu
BOOK REVIEW
by David Hajdu ; illustrated by John Carey
BOOK REVIEW
by John Carey
BOOK REVIEW
by John Carey
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.