A multifaceted and sometimes-compelling personal growth framework that’s hampered by uneven execution.
In this self-help book that blends psychology, systems thinking, and ancient and indigenous traditions, King advises readers on how to tap into their internal guidance system.
The author, an executive coach, encourages readers to cultivate a relationship with their “Inner Sage,” or the voice of embodied intuition, to increase meaningful engagement with life. The book explores how modern society’s information overload can overwhelm people with options and hinder decision-making. Four elements of wisdom are discussed: “Pattern Reading” (using the senses and intuition to observe life), “Grounded Action” (moving forward with both knowledge and humility), “Full Participation” (actively engaging), and “Deep Knowing” (perceiving deeper dimensions of reality). The author explores the principles of “inner alchemy,” which state that every experience can be a catalyst for transformation, that transformation requires both concentrated effort and surrender, and that real change occurs simultaneously in the body, heart, mind, and spirit. King asserts that “wisdom lies not in eliminating life’s unpredictability but in dancing skillfully with its rhythms.” The book goes on to address how “practiced improvisation” can help people accept and adapt to reality, offering advice on developing cognitive flexibility through meditation and building emotional resilience with mindfulness. King aims to help readers to recognize patterns in their lives and recommends physical activity, such as tai chi, for fostering embodied knowledge. He also explores wisdom in the context of communities, concluding the book with a reminder that “wisdom is not something to be attained, but a way of being.”
In this insightful guide, King emphasizes that wisdom isn’t about collecting more facts; it’s about learning to sense, interpret, and work with uncertainty. The overall tone of the work is respectful, honoring the reader’s experience and reassuring them that wisdom is something any person can cultivate and not a rare state, reserved for mystics. Its holistic approach gives equal weight to cognitive, physical, and spiritual aspects of human nature, and addresses modern-day difficulties, such as the “technology solution fallacy,” which mistakenly posits that wisdom can be reduced to algorithms. King draws from an eclectic knowledge base, presenting concepts such as neuroplasticity alongside the Zen idea of “no-mind” and the poet John Keats’ concept of “negative capability.” Wisdom such as “Amid volatility, in other words, the task is not to double down on certainty, but to become more agile in its absence” can apply to professional and personal realms. However, other passages can be unwieldy, such as, “Like alchemists of old who sought to transmute base metals into gold, we learn to work with the raw material of our experiences, discovering how life’s challenges and uncertainties can become the very substances from which wisdom emerges.” Metaphors also frequently become muddled; for instance, “The Dance of Transformation” oddly consists of scientifically named stages: calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, and coagulation; later, the dance metaphor shifts abruptly to a game metaphor: “as you continue your boundary dance, remember that you are not just playing to win a short-term game.”
A multifaceted and sometimes-compelling personal growth framework that’s hampered by uneven execution.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9781968662004
Page Count: 235
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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