A sensible, encouraging, and well-intentioned treatise on the importance of community.
Cartoonist and writer Johnson considers the ways our lives are enriched by relationships with those outside our nuclear families.
Following up an earlier memoir of polyamory (Many Love), Johnson here touches on the subject as it plays out in her life, but for the most part, she concerns herself with more platonic relationships. The term “kin,” as the author somewhat confusingly redefines it, doesn’t have anything to do with “bloodlines and lineage,” but stands in as a substitute for noncasual friendship. (“I like the word kin. It’s tidy and reminds me of other words with which I have positive association,” she explains.) Using the structure of an encouraging, down-to-earth self-help book and addressing the readers to whom she imparts advice familiarly as “you,” Johnson rambles through a wide range of studies on varied aspects of friendship and community to make the unsurprising points that raising infants often feels overwhelming, having friends close by is more satisfying than if they’re thousands of miles away, and asking for help is essential. She often pauses to suggest small actions readers might take to move in the direction of greater kinship: “Share meals with friends or neighbors” or “Swap play dates.” Some may find Johnson’s broader proposals for relationships more idealistic than practical. “Communities need individuals who are emotionally resilient as a result of rigorous self-inventory and intentional healing,” the author maintains, and she continually stresses the importance of therapy as a tool for maintaining friendships. The volume includes several of her cartoon illustrations, though fewer than those familiar with her earlier work might expect. Johnson’s thoughtfulness and compassion shine through, even if the reader comes out with only a few concrete plans for change.
A sensible, encouraging, and well-intentioned treatise on the importance of community.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668060650
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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