An action-oriented manual for success that might have benefited from streamlining.
Polastri presents a motivational self-help guide on empowered decision-making.
The author, a ski coach and the founder of EnterSki ski schools, draws on his experience as both an instructor and a business professional in this book about unlocking potential. Its foundational metaphor is a skiing skill called the “edge control,” which involves “applying and letting go the amount of edging (tilting the skis) to produce a desired outcome.” In decision making, he says, this manifests as taking a stance, overcoming obstacles, and adjusting one’s path toward a goal. The framework has three components: “Discovering Your Edge,” “Tuning Your Edge,” and “Dancing on the Edge.” The first involves inquiry into one’s instincts, habits, and beliefs, Polastri says, and exploring the liminal space between the known and unknown, where one may either progress or regress. Intentional action, such as defining one’s goals, is also key, he notes. Regarding “Tuning Your Edge,” Polastri advises getting out of one’s head through breathwork, a centering practice, and grounding exercises; he also recommends finding a “practice buddy” for mutual encouragement, support, and feedback. “Dancing on the Edge” involves navigating uncharted terrain with grace, knowing that challenges are manageable. To that end, Polastri advises seeing the world with “soft eyes” (a relaxed and open demeanor), rather than with “hard eyes” (an analytical, closed-off perspective). Such receptivity, he asserts, may result in seeing signs, becoming “a conduit for divine guidance,” or experiencing increased intuition. Polastri’s ski-inspired approach is appealingly uncommon in the self-help space, and his framing of change as a catalyst for adventure may inspire readers. However, the book’s focus feels too broad; concepts such as intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are well-trod territory in the genre and could have easily been omitted. Still, his supportive tone enhances suggestions such as self-talk, creative expression, and gratitude to ease liminal space discomfort. Exercises such as creating an “embodied goal statement” (declaring “I am,” followed by a commitment, a specific outcome, and a deadline, all while moving one’s body) make manifestation seem easy and accessible.
An action-oriented manual for success that might have benefited from streamlining.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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