Thoughtful and enlightening; sure to be a calming and reassuring resource for caregivers.
A guide salutes the unsung hero status of caregivers.
There are over 43 million unpaid caregivers in the United States, more than 34 million of whom have provided assistance to an adult age 50 or older, according to statistics cited by Chillis (Misery at Work?, 2015, etc.). The author looked after her husband full-time for three years, and she is currently a certified caregiver consultant; as such, she deeply understands the highs and lows of a role that can be both challenging and rewarding. When Chillis kept seeing “heart-wrenching, negative feelings” expressed by caregivers, she decided to write a book about the care that they needed to give themselves. The compassionate manual begins by highlighting some myths and truths about the role, but most of the content surrounds seven “secrets” designed to help caregivers maintain an upbeat outlook. The first “secret,” for example, provides an excellent overview of different emotions, such as guilt, resentment, and grief. The author defines each one, discusses why it matters, uses examples to show its effect, and presents coping techniques. Another “secret” concentrates on how to resolve conflict within the family, delivering useful tips and urging mediation when all else fails. The final secret appropriately addresses the complex feelings of the caregiver after the loved one is gone. The work covers a broad range of topics within the secrets, focusing on physical, mental, and emotional health issues. Each of the secrets contains illustrative anecdotes involving caregivers, along with “tools” and “tip sheets” to assist in implementing strategies, all of which are simple yet powerful. The book is written in easy-to-follow language with lots of subheads, short sections, itemized lists, and “key takeaways” in each chapter. One of the more important elements is the heavy reliance on the stories of caregivers—sure to furnish readers the comforting sense that they are not alone in facing the various problems. Throughout the volume, Chillis adopts a positive, encouraging tone, recognizing that the caregiver may be emotionally frayed and in need of gentle coaching and guidance.
Thoughtful and enlightening; sure to be a calming and reassuring resource for caregivers.Pub Date: June 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-988645-22-3
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Wellness Ink Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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