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I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

For devotees of both Dyer and self-help books, an inspirational account of the essence of the man behind Your Erroneous...

A self-help guru’s reflections on how he became who he is.

Self-empowerment is one key to success in life, and nowhere is this more evident than in Dyer's (21 Days to Master Success and Inner Peace, 2012, etc.) rich unfolding of his life stories. From some of his earliest childhood memories in the early 1940s to the present, Dyer takes readers on a nearly year-by-year trip through the events in his life that led him to write more than 40 books and undertake other projects related to self-development. Each action, he writes, often directed by a divine force, put him one step further on the path of becoming the man he knew he was meant to become. For years, he questioned the people and books influencing him, but he continued to follow an inner knowledge that connected him spiritually and emotionally to the world around him. Dyer writes, "It no longer takes years for me to have this insight—everything and everyone are connected to each other and to the Tao or the universal one mind from which all things originate and return." Dyer addresses the fears and setbacks that he encountered along the way, including the need to find his absentee father, whose abandonment filled Dyer with anger for years. Only at his gravesite was the author able to forgive the man and "[cleanse his] soul of the toxicity that living with internal rage brings." Every emotional experience was another pivot point for Dyer, and from them, he produced his best-selling books, audiotapes and lectures. The author’s reflections on the twists and turns of his authentic life reveal the power inherent in each of us to have the same joyful existence, though many of his pronouncements may be too far out there for many readers—e.g., “There is no time; 1968 and 2018 are all one, even though our body-mind sees them as separated by 50 years.”

For devotees of both Dyer and self-help books, an inspirational account of the essence of the man behind Your Erroneous Zones and other self-help titles.

Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4019-4403-2

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Hay House

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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