An impassioned, if at times unfocused, plea for making the world a better place by identifying and addressing the...
Part workbook, part memoir, this self-help guide offers a plan for getting beyond trauma-induced pain to enjoy a better quality of life.
According to this manual, honoring “your journey” involves finding a way to make peace with the hand you’ve been dealt in life. A first step is recognizing choices, and how individuals may use “detours” like drugs, self-pity, and depression to blunt the effects of psychic wounds. This first-person narrative contains tools for overcoming mental distress, beginning with how to reframe terrible experiences to let go of damaging emotions like anger and resentment. Other topics include how to build self-esteem and establish boundaries, the value of identifying personal strengths and weaknesses, and the need to express compassion for oneself and others. Special attention is given to the subject of regrets, and how to manage and minimize them to make it possible to move forward in the aftermath of a trauma. To reinforce the content, exercises and questions for self-examination are listed at the end of each chapter. In this book, Gilbert (You Can’t Un-Ring the Bell, 2016), a clinical psychologist, includes personal anecdotes to illustrate her hard-won insights. Though at times she overuses clichés like “be all you can be,” it’s evident she’s carried the burden of treating some of society’s mentally sickest people, including criminally violent offenders and their innocent victims, causing her to suffer from “vicarious post-traumatic stress.” Her outlook is often bleak in spite of the positive message she’s trying to convey; she’s clearly seen the dark side of humanity: “I have actually looked into the eyes of evil on more than one occasion and I’ll never forget it.” Countering her despair is the hope she derives from her strong Christian faith, which she distinguishes from organized religion. Though the book flows well, the organization is loose with occasional repetitions. Still, the author’s sincerity and credibility shine through every section.
An impassioned, if at times unfocused, plea for making the world a better place by identifying and addressing the impediments to good mental health.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4327-7907-8
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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