A thoughtfully constructed guide to leaving a legacy.
Writer/consultant Weijo was struck by “the power and importance of legacy” by three events: the birth of his granddaughter, learning he had cancer, and the discovery of old coins collected by himself, his wife and their parents. This led him to formulate his own process for creating a legacy “focused on helping future generations avoid missteps and guiding them with the knowledge and heritage of past generations.” In this brief yet informative guide, Weijo first talks about the meaning of legacy and then explores the effect one’s ancestors can have on future generations through a novel example: Barack Obama. “It was a very complex legacy provided from two different continents,” Weijo writes. “Such a rich legacy our president was given by those who came before him.” Weijo acknowledges that other factors also influenced Obama’s rise to the presidency, but the impact of his ancestry is nothing if not intriguing. Next, Weijo adeptly covers the benefits derived from creating a legacy, guiding the reader through the legacy creation process: how to decide on scope, determine themes and recipients, select gifts and create action plans, etc. The author makes a salient point along the way: “Legacy gifts do not have to be just money or property; remember to also share your values and wisdom.” In fact, Weijo describes how he used the coins he found as the basis for an ongoing collection that both represents his family’s timeline and gives him the opportunity to educate his granddaughter about such good ideas as investing for the long term. Included in the book, and on a companion website, are useful forms—input worksheets and legacy theme worksheets—to help facilitate the creation of a legacy plan. Weijo appends his own legacy plan as a detailed example for the reader. Interspersed throughout his book are quality black-and-white photos, captionless but presumably of some of Weijo’s family members.
Clear, concise, and well-written; a finely crafted manual offering instructive and valuable assistance to those who want to leave a lasting legacy.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5454-8595-8
Page Count: 154
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: SELF-HELP
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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 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP
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The popular blogger and author delivers an entertaining and thought-provoking third book about the importance of being hopeful in terrible times.
“We are a culture and a people in need of hope,” writes Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, 2016, etc.). With an appealing combination of gritty humor and straightforward prose, the author floats the idea of drawing strength and hope from a myriad of sources in order to tolerate the “incomprehensibility of your existence.” He broadens and illuminates his concepts through a series of hypothetical scenarios based in contemporary reality. At the dark heart of Manson’s guide is the “Uncomfortable Truth,” which reiterates our cosmic insignificance and the inevitability of death, whether we blindly ignore or blissfully embrace it. The author establishes this harsh sentiment early on, creating a firm foundation for examining the current crisis of hope, how we got here, and what it means on a larger scale. Manson’s referential text probes the heroism of Auschwitz infiltrator Witold Pilecki and the work of Isaac Newton, Nietzsche, Einstein, and Immanuel Kant, as the author explores the mechanics of how hope is created and maintained through self-control and community. Though Manson takes many serpentine intellectual detours, his dark-humored wit and blunt prose are both informative and engaging. He is at his most convincing in his discussions about the fallibility of religious beliefs, the modern world’s numerous shortcomings, deliberations over the “Feeling Brain” versus the “Thinking Brain,” and the importance of striking a happy medium between overindulging in and repressing emotions. Although we live in a “couch-potato-pundit era of tweetstorms and outrage porn,” writes Manson, hope springs eternal through the magic salves of self-awareness, rational thinking, and even pain, which is “at the heart of all emotion.”
Clever and accessibly conversational, Manson reminds us to chill out, not sweat the small stuff, and keep hope for a better world alive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-288843-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2019
Categories: SELF-HELP
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