A lively, hands-on manual to clearing away the cobwebs and seizing a new program for living life to the fullest.
A debut guide encourages readers to look at all of life’s possibilities.
In his book, Vale attempts to concentrate on seven key “inflection points,” critical aspects of life where unclear thinking can lead to poor choices: relationships, careers, health, money, the past, emotional pain, and faith. These are the crucial problem areas, and, as the author writes, everybody reaches them in due time: “Good or bad, all of us eventually come to a special meeting with ourselves.” The goal of the personal and spiritual advice (the book wears its religion comparatively lightly but is nevertheless targeted to Vale’s fellow Christians) in the ensuing chapters is to offer optimistic and organized help in building the “new you” the author envisions for each reader. In a series of short, vividly written chapters, Vale lays out his proposal for constructing that new you, predicated on the assumption that all of his readers want to make changes in their lives. He dubs his program “The SB-33 System” (cleverly coined to stress that it’s the opposite of any “BS” plan) and asks readers to give it a try by applying eight strategies over the course of 33 days. The SB method boils down to a very self-conscious revamping of a personal regimen, from diet and exercise to aspirational and emotional facets, with an emphasis on record-keeping and personal accountability (the energetic book includes ample space for readers to do their own writing). This all centers on a TEA strategy: target, environment, and approach. Vale’s prose is extremely self-effacing and jovial; this may be the friendliest self-help book ever written. His nostrums can be all-purpose to the point of blandness, and some of his contentions may leave nonbelievers scratching their heads (he tells his readers, for instance, that “fog, lightning, the wind, the galaxies, volcanoes” entail both energy and “mystery”). But the overall message is one of ringing belief in human improvability.
A lively, hands-on manual to clearing away the cobwebs and seizing a new program for living life to the fullest.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5462-0643-9
Page Count: 218
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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