Lovegrove balances his book neatly between the nuts-and-bolts approach to being successful and the more philosophical sense...
Making the case for a mindful approach to career and life development.
Any guide to a successful life or career must take liberties in how success is defined. In this book on finding your own way forward, Lovegrove, the U.S. managing partner at the Brunswick Group, takes a more philosophical approach. This isn't to say that the author doesn’t consider the how, when, and where, but he makes the case that the reasons why will go a lot further toward building a satisfying career and life. Lovegrove's thinking with his mosaic principle is that the idea of a “jack of all trades, master of none" is unnecessarily constricting, that creating a wide-ranging, diverse life is not only healthier in the present, but will also open up more choices as time goes on. The author addresses the trend of specialization in many of its forms, from high school students being steered away from a liberal arts education to the medical profession, in which it’s commonplace to require different surgeons for nearly every individual part of the body. Lovegrove argues that taking a T-shaped approach—having an area of deep knowledge that serves as a base, of sorts, from which you expand outward into different subjects—prepares you for a broader range of challenges while avoiding the master-of-none scenario. The author lays out six skill areas he feels are crucial: a developed moral compass, a prepared mind, an intellectual thread, an integrated network, contextual intelligence, and transferable skill sets. Lovegrove compellingly draws on examples from his own careers to illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of each skill area, and he bolsters his narrative with anecdotes about other successful people in a variety of disciplines.
Lovegrove balances his book neatly between the nuts-and-bolts approach to being successful and the more philosophical sense of understanding yourself first before seeking to change the world for others.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-556-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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