Incisive observations on happiness drawn from Eastern philosophy.
A guide to finding contentment by looking inward.
Hung’s debut comprises blog posts written over the course of the past 10 years. By sharing his “thoughts and feelings” on his “ongoing journey to happiness,” he hopes to “inspire everyone to have a positive, well-rounded, peaceful, meaningful, fulfilled, energetic, and intense life.” The posts (which can be read in any order and have been capably translated from Vietnamese by the author) cover multiple topics—suffering, joy, sadness. Many are brief musings, with Hung writing a few sentences on the power of nature, barriers to happiness, or finding peace in being alone by “being in touch with your body and mind.” Longer essays reflect on what he learned climbing Yen Tu, a Vietnamese mountain and holy site, and the importance of living ethically. Much of the thoughtful, Buddhist-influenced book considers the ways self-reflection and looking inward can lead to happiness. The mind-body connection and the relationship between physical health and joy are also discussed. In the middle section, the focus shifts to work. Hung (the founder of a technology company) believes that an unhappy work environment is like hell while a positive environment is like heaven. The advice in this section tends toward the prosaic. Run-of-the-mill tips (which seem borrowed from typical career advice) cover how to handle criticism, become a better public speaker, and set goals. The author doesn’t steer the reader onto a clear path toward happiness; rather, he recommends mindfulness, gently pushing people to pause and evaluate their life choices. The mind is like a stormy lake’s surface, he writes, “surging with crashing waves caused by negative thoughts and feelings.” To “realize the deeper meanings” below the tumult, you must make your mind still. Throughout, his words offer encouragement and insight: “We and not anyone else are responsible for our own lives.”
Incisive observations on happiness drawn from Eastern philosophy.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69238-493-7
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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