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
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
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
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SEEN & HEARD
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