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
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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