A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.
Harlow’s second self-help guide, following Happily Divorced (2019), is for readers striving to co-parent well after separation.
This book offers a variety of suggestions for how to navigate the most difficult decisions regarding co-parenting. She wants parents to thrive in collaborative relationships rather than fight at every step—or just try to “get through” until the children are grown. She’s optimistic that, in most cases, improvement in co-parenting is possible. Harlow covers a wide range of relevant topics, starting with “uncoupling”: how couples might tell their kids about a decision to separate and how to address questions of custody, living arrangements, and potential reconciliations. She then introduces decisions that need to be made when first establishing a co-parenting plan, including elements that one might not consider immediately, such as arrangements involving pets, vacations, extracurricular activities. The author also tackles questions regarding money, new partners, and stepparenting. Harlow is consistent in her approach, often bringing her suggestions back to the golden Rule. She wants co-parents to be empathetic, intentional, and good communicators, even coining a new term that encompasses these states: matter-of-fact caring. The clearly organized structure of this book successfully presents the author’s advice in a logical order while also laying out personal experiences—such as finding a new home after a divorce, attending parent-teacher conferences, dealing with unexpected events, and more—as she tried to build a collaborative co-parenting framework with her ex-husband; at one point, her son writes one section about his parents’ relationship. However, what’s missing in this book is expert advice and cited evidence to back up Harlow’s advice and claims, particularly in sections such as discipline, in which insights from a child or family psychologist might have strengthened the author’s opinions. A few more anecdotes from other families would also have provided a more varied perspective.
A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Promethean Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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