An empathetic approach to personal health that strikes an effective balance between inspiration and practicality.
A debut author details her meandering path toward weight loss and well-being.
Dedicating the book to anyone who has followed a fad diet or detox routine—“the starters, the failers, the do-it-againers”—Walker blends her own health journey with doable tips that defy the standard advice of counting calories and performing rote exercise routines. The author shares her lifelong struggle with body image and unhealthy habits that “were familiar but toxic.” By her 30s, Walker was on prescription medicine to manage her blood pressure and high cholesterol; by her 40s, the hormonal shifts associated with perimenopause and menopause led to constant weight gain, brain fog, and body aches. She hit “rock bottom,” and a life-threatening kidney complication galvanized her to reevaluate her yo-yo approach to diet and exercise. She found that by listening to her body’s signals rather than the rules of pop dieticians, she managed to lose 140 pounds—and find inner peace and fulfillment. Central to her approach is awareness of the mind-body connection; she emphasizes breathwork, meditation, and “joyful movement” (exercise should never be a grueling form of punishment but “a joyful expression of life”). She offers a step-by-step guide to Body Scan Meditation (“start by focusing on your toes”), which teaches readers how to tune into their bodies. Similarly, she eschews a draconian attitude toward food, and instead urges readers to find “the ease and joy of preparing and savoring nutritious meals” with fresh ingredients. The work includes a wealth of engaging, useful tips, and Walker uses a hummingbird’s silhouette, which appears on the cover and throughout the book, as a visual reminder that healthy living resembles a hummingbird’s movement (with midair pauses and sudden directional shifts).
An empathetic approach to personal health that strikes an effective balance between inspiration and practicality.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798891328174
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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