A self-help book that concisely addresses the personal qualities one needs for success.
A tech-related guide to approaching change with an open mind.
In this debut self-help book, Kenyeres, an entrepreneur and “digital lifestyle coach,” doesn’t focus on technology itself but on his readers’ relationships to new devices as they adapt them to their lives. Instead of offering specific advice regarding hardware and software, he guides readers through a series of exercises designed to increase their confidence, self-awareness, and senses of purpose—broad concepts that can also be applied to their use of technology. Early on, he lays out his theory of “mind-sets”: “I believe that each person is born with a programmable global positioning system (GPS). While some people learn to program theirs to take them directly to Successville, others inadvertently choose a more roundabout route, which may or may not get them there at all.” He then details seven specific adjustments that readers can undertake in order to change those attitudes; the first, for example, is “to think of failure as different degrees of success.” Overcoming fear and uncertainty, while maintaining a positive attitude toward different types of change, is at the core of the book’s approach. Each chapter features exercises that lead readers through the process, such as, “Identify the gaps between the ‘what is’ and the ‘what will be’ in your life.” Although the book is short, its brevity is a strength, as Kenyeres largely avoids the types of anecdotes and platitudes that fill other books in the genre. This isn’t a work that will teach readers the tricks of the iPhone 6 or how to install WordPress, but it will provide them with a more holistic approach to ongoing learning and self-improvement. Even without the technical details, Kenyeres makes good use of his years of experience as a corporate trainer, as he presents a framework for advancement on a broad scale. Some readers may want to look elsewhere for more technology-specific advice, but others will find value in this guide to understanding purpose and embracing change.
A self-help book that concisely addresses the personal qualities one needs for success.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1483418889
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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