Well-researched and skimmable but sometimes light on actionable strategy.
Editors Polly and Britton expand upon the work begun by the late University of Michigan psychology professor Christopher Peterson and former American Psychological Association president Marty Seligman in this guide to the 24 character strengths.
According to Seligman, positive personality traits, or character strengths, form the backbone of positive psychology. Gaining a foundational knowledge of these traits predicates a full life and involves three steps: becoming aware of “signature strengths,” exploring their meanings, and mindfully implementing them. Polly and Britton describe each trait at length and include relevant articles, to-do lists, and inspirational passages meant to be read aloud. The second half includes essays from those who’ve studied and realized their signature strengths. One writer, Scott Asalone, co-founder of A&S Global Management Consulting, lists best practices for using Peterson’s research in corporate workshops. Executive coach Yee-Ming Tan discusses how assessing one’s strengths plays a role in a negative-feedback environment: “The power…is not just in the identification of strengths but in the integration and the shift that comes afterwards.” Character strengths range from appreciation to zest, but the depth of each chapter varies wildly. Virtues like fairness and humility strike the biggest chord, explain Polly and Britton, when they promote increasing self-awareness. An activity for practicing fairness suggests self-monitoring when errors are made to encourage being forthright and admitting mistakes. While the guide offers a quick, easily digestible list of admirable traits, the quality of the advice for cultivation of those traits varies. For example, an activity for curiosity essentially suggests reading more often and broadly. Furthermore, the suggestion to perform three acts of kindness per week doesn’t offer a strategy for sustaining the practice. The guide isn’t designed to be read cover to cover, and it’s handiest when used as reference material.
Well-researched and skimmable but sometimes light on actionable strategy.Pub Date: June 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-46564-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Positive Psychology News
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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