Time-honored advice, if not always timely.
Handy tips toward more upstanding social behavior, informed by Stoicism and history.
Holiday has developed a cottage industry popularizing Stoicism via a newsletter, store, and books like this, the latest in a series on “Stoic virtues.” Here, the author focuses on justice, with chapters stressing the importance and merits of old-fashioned verities like honesty, forgiveness, social engagement, and more. All respectable ideas, and Holiday has mastered a tone to deliver them that’s firm but compassionate, somewhere between New Age concepts and Jordan Peterson–esque moral scolding. Still, for a book purportedly rooted in the teachings of the ancients, Holiday gives surprisingly little attention to Stoic standard-bearers like Cato the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Instead, many of his examples come from the annals of the Greatest Generation, particularly President Harry S. Truman, who is presented as an underrated, rock-ribbed ethical figure. (To bolster the point, the author notes Truman’s deep admiration of Aurelius.) The parade of mid-20th-century eminences—Martha Graham, Gandhi, Clarence Darrow, Rosa Parks, Albert Schweitzer—is relevant, though it has the curious effect of making all of this justice seeking feel distant from the present moment. Stray examples of contemporary ethical leaders like NBA coach Gregg Popovich or former German chancellor Angela Merkel are exceptions that prove the rule. More interesting in some ways than Holiday’s delivery of unimpeachable examples of good behavior is an afterword about how he has managed hiccups in his business in terms of ethical sourcing, co-workers’ bad behavior, and readers resenting his engagement in politics: “It’s a test we face in a world driven by algorithms—do we tell people what they want to hear? Or do we say and do what we think needs to be done?” Fresher examples might better sell the philosophy as fit for the current moment.
Time-honored advice, if not always timely.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780593191712
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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