An informative and business-savvy proposal for small-scale, attentive elder care.
Small residential care homes are good for the elderly and for the bottom lines of investors, according to this insightful business study.
Some, a real estate broker and owner of residential care homes in the Seattle area, touts the residential care home model—featuring ordinary suburban houses with six to ten residents and round-the-clock professional staffing—as a more humane approach to elder care than large, institutionalized assisted living facilities and nursing homes. When done right, she argues, residential homes have a comfortable, familylike atmosphere and a high staff-to-resident ratio that permits individualized care for residents. Employees, she notes, can make home-cooked meals to residents’ specifications, served when they want them instead of at rigidly planned meal times; help residents practice their preferred hobbies and activities instead of relegating them to once-a-week bingo games; accompany residents to medical appointments; and spend time chatting and forging meaningful relationships. The author contends that her model of high-quality care makes for happier residents who are less prone to depression; in turn, residential care homes can charge higher rents with higher profits. Some’s primer often reads like a business plan, replete with hard-headed financial reasoning. (“Two vacancies would be a $14,000 shortage every month. Could you afford to keep a place running with that much of an income drop?…That’s why I have focused on avoiding those empty beds. By keeping employees motivated and well compensated, the home succeeds as a business.”) But she also pays attention to the softer side of elder care, writing of the wrenching psychological dislocations many elderly people endure in sensitive, nuanced prose: “When I was working at an assisted-living facility and a new resident would arrive, I would greet them and try to get to know them a little bit. One of the first things they would ask me would be ‘Does this mean I am never going back to my home? Will I be dying soon?’” Some’s expertise and passion for elder care makes her pitch all the more persuasive.
An informative and business-savvy proposal for small-scale, attentive elder care.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798990282605
Page Count: 186
Publisher: NS Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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