by Phyllis Korkki ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2016
Insightful, encouraging, and universally practical.
A New York Times business reporter shares her wisdom on creating and completing that elusive back-burner dream project.
Korkki’s debut, a crisply written meditation on goal achievement, was spurred by an ambitious article she’d written on deadlines. Though the overall process of penning the book was “rough and halting” and the idea had been gestating for decades, it evolved into a learning process for an author plagued by laziness, procrastination, and a barrage of distractions. She shares her personal journey through charming anecdotes and notes on preparatory self-care and via an extensive collective of interviews with psychotherapists, who coach aging adults on their goals; neuroscientists, who study cognitive decline in the middle-aged; dream-interpreting psychoanalysts; and a Jamaican reggae artist who recorded his first full-length album at age 65. Korkki also shares her own path of bringing the book to publication, including the climbing of a mountain with a Mayo Clinic physician. Naturally, she writes, a steely sense of focus, consistent motivation, commitment, and patience are key, but roadblocks like imperfection, self-doubt, and uncertainty are also very much a reality. “Each person who works on a Big Thing experiences limits that can be accepted and also harnessed,” writes Korkki. “Even if the limits seem to be negative, they can be transformed into something positive.” Hopeful and inspirational, the author profiles extraordinary people making their own aspirations a reality while battling addiction or physical and mental disabilities. The book is grounded in the cultivation of self-confidence and empowerment, and these elements are paramount particularly for an older generation wishing to leave a commemorative legacy in their wake (“the resolve of generativity”). With a supportive tone and gentle but insistent nudging, Korkki urges readers to creatively seize their own great endeavor as it can prove “one of the best ways to connect with the world.”
Insightful, encouraging, and universally practical.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-238430-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
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
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