by Tracy Litt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 5, 2019
Inspirational, life-affirming, and infectiously exuberant.
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A self-help work that offers a lively discourse on freedom of choice.
Hypnotherapist Litt makes a compelling case for self-determination in this debut work, suggesting that “you can change yourself and anything in your life that you want to.” In prose that’s both conversational and forceful, she asks such provocative questions as “Are you ready to wake up and become your own observer?” and “Are you ready to give yourself permission to be happy?” Answering these and similar queries requires self-assessment and introspection, but the author aims to assist readers by offering examples from her own life and practice, tendering compassionate, useful advice. Although much of the subject matter here is common in self-improvement books, the manner in which Litt packages the material is intriguingly different. She organizes the work into eight chapters, each representing a life choice. In a chapter on human thought, for instance, she discusses the concept of “mastering your mind,” and she includes helpful visuals of “thought loops,” depicting the decision-making thought process and demonstrating the difference between “an imprisoned mind and an empowered mind.” Another chapter details “Life Suckers”—behaviors that “suck your energy…and keep you away from the profound happiness, joy, and success that you deserve.” Each chapter contains a helpful section titled “The Work,” featuring exercises that often encourage readers to come to terms with their fears and perceived inadequacies. Some of the book’s concepts particularly stand out, such as the notion of “Radical Personal Responsibility,” about which Litt writes, “You are the problem and the solution, the obstacle and the answer, the pain and the relief.” Throughout the work, she engagingly uses such abstract phrases to grab attention and then slyly explains their intended meaning. Overall, Litt shows herself to be an expressive, thoughtful, and candid writer. Her observations on human behavior are penetrating and insightful, and her belief in the human spirit is almost palpable.
Inspirational, life-affirming, and infectiously exuberant.Pub Date: July 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0400-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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