Kamarei explores a scientific basis for fate in this debut work of nonfiction.
Part pop-science inquiry, part self-help guide, this book seeks to determine whether there is such a thing as personal fate—and if it is within people’s power to alter it. Through original investigation and research into the works of others, Kamarei has synthesized what science has taught the world so far: “I did not actually discover any NEW factor about fate. Instead, I pinpointed, elaborated and classified all factors and subfactors that contribute to building and shaping our fate in a systematic way.” The factors break down into six groups. Some are outside of the individual’s sphere of influence (genetics, prenatal development, birth conditions), while others are partially (environment, chance) or firmly (freely made decisions) within people’s control. By better understanding what aspects of life are within one’s power or outside of it, Kamarei argues that readers can work to bend their fates toward their own preferred outcomes, a state that the author terms an individual’s “Unique Summit.” One’s Unique Summit is reached via finding an individual balance of tangible circumstances (“Quality of Life”) and intangible ones (“Happiness”). Jargon aside, the book is less a belief system and more a mélange of statistics and genetic factoids that explain much of life’s unpleasantness, from the likelihood that twins will share various handicaps to the conditions that affect IQ to a ranked list of the most common causes of divorce. Kamarei writes in a clear, upbeat prose that lends every sentence a sense of cheerful vitality. So much of people’s fates (according to the author’s model) is determined before they are out of infancy that the book arguably serves as a more useful primer for how people should raise future children than how to fix their own lives. Even so, the author eagerly points out those places where agency is possible. Readers looking for a motivational work that is heavier on science than on aphorisms (though there are some of those as well) may find this volume appealing. If nothing else, it succeeds in making fate a little less frightening.
Pub Date: May 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5306-5004-0
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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