A philosophical grappling with hard questions.
Light in dark times.
Host of the Wild With Sarah Wilson podcast, award-winning Australian journalist Wilson sees the world in a state of collapse, exacerbated by inequality and polarization. Once a stalwart climate activist, she has become disillusioned by practices to reverse global warming, and she admits to feeling hopeless. Assuming that her feelings are shared by others, she offers a “kaleidoscope of ideas” to respond to an overarching question: “When hope is gone, might there be something else—something more useful and nourishing—that a despairing humanity can cleave to?” Drawing on more than 200 interviewees (they appear on her podcast)—“energy futurists, economists, philosophers, climate scientists, effective altruists, demographers, spiritualists, and at least two nuns”—she finds insights that console her. When we let go of hope, she writes, “truth emerges as a far more solid and enlivening thing to peg a life to.” She has no faith in what she calls “efforting,” instead seeing the benefit of human connection: “small intentions and interventions,” such as “moments of intentional collaboration, cooperation, and communication.” Living with uncertainty does not mean living with despair but requires looking away from “chaos-making,” a tactic designed to undermine cohesiveness. “Bear witness to what’s going on, be engaged, and don’t allow for overwhelm,” she writes. “Do less, buy less, grab less, meddle less, strategize less.” Small moves, “powered by fierce love” may generate “unexpected turns and mysterious transformation.” Her tone is conversational and confiding; she includes wide margins and blank spaces for readers to write down their feelings, and her prescriptions focus not on doing but on being: finding a way “to live a meaningful, human life with agency amid what is going on.”
A philosophical grappling with hard questions.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780593994993
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Life
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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