An engaging retirement self-help guide.
Two octogenarians share their wisdom on nonfinancial aspects of retirement.
Many retirement books focus largely on the bottom line: financial planning, retirement savings accounts, Social Security benefits, and the like. A handful of works take a different tack, though, such as this one, which the authors dub “a guidebook to help you plan the next chapter of your life.” Certainly, both authors are accomplished retirees: Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware, and Hiland is a former business executive and consultant, both 81 years old at the time of the book’s writing. Their approach is to lay the groundwork for the reader’s transition to retirement, based on their own experience and informal research they conducted with other retirees. This slim but personal volume intentionally lacks “prescriptive advice”; instead, it features descriptive examples and thoughtfully constructed worksheets. Kaufman and Hiland start with a straightforward overview of retirement itself that seems geared primarily toward executives and professionals like the authors themselves; they note, for example, that “In the workplace, your position establishes your status with commensurate respect and privileges. With retirement, you become a ‘formerly’ or ‘used-to-be.’ ” For this audience, this work offers a brief but valuable perspective. Much of it highlights areas of concern in short chapters that focus on how to maintain one’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Kaufman and Hiland effectively facilitate such self-reflection by posing direct, insightful questions and offering checklists; most notable is a provocative “What I Value” worksheet and a “self-assessment of your emotional intelligence,” which applies a ranking scale to five dimensions (self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, empathy, and motivation). Toward the book’s end, Kaufman and Hiland share their own retirement stories to demonstrate how “Very different approaches can accomplish a successful result.” Given their impressive backgrounds, these intimate anecdotes make for fascinating reading. In closing, Kaufman and Hiland discuss their later years with candor and grace. The authors also point to additional books and websites, within the text and in appendices, which may help extend readers’ knowledge base as they mull over their futures.
An engaging retirement self-help guide.Pub Date: April 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1683-7
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Houndstooth Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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