Moving examples of everyday courage and achievement, sure to motivate readers on their own personal journeys.
Real-life stories of women who’ve triumphed over adversity and achieved personal and professional success.
Hipsky (Education/Robert Morris Univ.; The Missing Piece in the Law of Attraction, 2015, etc.), a radio show host and college professor, has interviewed numerous inspiring women over the years, including cancer survivors and successful businesswomen. In this volume, the first of a trilogy, she shares some of their life stories with the goal of helping readers to find their own inspiration. Different sections cover broad themes, such as identifying one’s purpose, finding one’s passion, overcoming life’s obstacles, and the power of faith. The women featured here are diverse, including Lisa Lakenan of the Goodwill Healthy Start House for homeless single moms; successful TV actress Brianna Brown; children’s book author Sheri Fink; food blogger Lisa Fetzko Kozich; and Mary Amons of Bravo’s Real Housewives series. Although each woman’s experience is unique, some common threads emerge. Many have experienced abuse at the hands of husbands or boyfriends, and a significant number have gone through divorces; others have started businesses or nonprofit organizations. Most have “beat the odds” and overcome significant challenges on their journeys to fulfillment. The stories are most engaging when Hipsky lets the women speak for themselves; when she occasionally inserts herself into the narrative, the effect is distracting, as when she brags that one woman “calls me her Fairy Godmother.” But for the most part, the personality of each woman shines through. The stories are brief but effective, and readers looking for doses of inspiration will definitely find them here. Most readers will be impressed by the likes of Mary K. Hoodhood, whose efforts to feed hungry children earned her a Presidential Citizens Medal; Tamara Fielding, a former refugee who spent three years in an Indonesian concentration camp during World War II; or Alicia Kozakiewicz, who survived a kidnapping as a teenager and has started her own organization to educate parents and kids about online safety. Whatever their personal histories, all of Hipsky’s subjects once doubted their own power, but perseverance and hope allowed them to thrive, even in difficult circumstances.
Moving examples of everyday courage and achievement, sure to motivate readers on their own personal journeys.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5136-0422-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: The Missing Piece Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing biography that will help Stead's fans place her fiction in the context of her life and may well attract new readers to her work. Christina Stead (190283), who was born and died in Australia (about which, writes Rowley, she was ``both nostalgic and patronising''), did her writing during her years in Europe and the US. Although she tapped real events and people for her fiction—and not just for her autobiographical novels, including the superb The Man Who Loved Children—she could be secretive in her private papers, identifying people by fictional names, writing in code, and ultimately destroying many documents. Despite this obstacle, Rowley (an Australian academic, currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University) offers a coherent and convincing portrait that reaches back into a youth in which Stead was overshadowed by her father, who first instilled in her a lifelong socialist orientation, insecurity about her appearance (he dubbed her ``Pig Face''), and a yearning to be adored by a man. When she arrived in London in 1928, Stead found just the man—William Blake (originally Blech), whom Rowley succinctly describes as a ``Marxist investments manager who seemed to know something about everything.'' Blake hired her to be his secretary, and Stead accompanied him to Paris, where their romance flourished—despite a wife who would not divorce Blake for 23 years. When the bank employing Blake collapsed, the pair fled to New York. Stead's writings earned only modest royalties even when favorably reviewed, and Blake could not find work, so they returned to Europe in a consistently difficult hunt for economic security that gave their lives a nomadic flavor. By 1949, Stead said to a friend, ``I have been a writer, quite unsuccessfully for twenty years,'' although a revival of interest in her work, which began in the mid-1960s, helped her return to Australia in 1969 as a famous author and ``Official Personage.'' A welcome study of an underrated author. (16 pages of photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3411-0
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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