Friendly inspiration for toastmasters, speechwriters, and anyone looking for bits of wit.
A debut book mixes common-sense advice with more than 200 notable quotes from famous figures.
Sounding a lot like dear old Dad (“Nothing in life is free—nothing!”), Pollack doles out practical observations, accompanied by quotes from a variety of personalities—such as President Donald Trump, Oscar Wilde, and hockey player Wayne Gretzky. This eclectic compilation also includes a hodgepodge of themes, including parenting, embracing friends, exercising, and achieving a balance in life. A breeze to browse, the book puts quotes in boldface and provides short chapters that can be read quickly. Often upbeat, Pollack begins with college basketball coach Jimmy Valvano, who, battling a rare cancer, urged: “Don’t give up....Don’t ever give up!” The author also showcases his favorite rocker, Bruce Springsteen, and his take on perseverance: “Well, keep pushin’ till it’s understood and these badlands start treating us good.” Some of the quotes are humorous, like the quip attributed to W.C. Fields: “Warning: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing with you.” Pollack also adds a few poignant personal anecdotes, like the time he held a loved one’s hand as she died. Smooth-flowing and conversational, Pollack’s voice is down-to-earth. On the subject of risk-taking, he describes gambling: “Hell, sometimes it’s worth going to the ponies just to get the blood flowing.” A couple of quote placements are ironic; for example, the rough-and-tumble Gen. George Patton and the soft-mannered TV sitcom character Frasier Crane appear on the same page. Leaping from one thought to the next (the subject of children having too many play dates quickly turns into the importance of taking videos of kids), Pollack offers well-worn conclusions, such as his advice on practice: “It’s not enough to have talent or a gift—it’s how hard you work to enhance your God-given talents that makes the difference.” Several unrelated topics—like the author's opinions on plastic surgery and gun control—seem messily strung together in the conclusion. Nevertheless, this spirited conversation is a pleasant day trip through familiar territory.
Friendly inspiration for toastmasters, speechwriters, and anyone looking for bits of wit.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5545-4
Page Count: 170
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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