An energetic guide to bringing greater intentionality to daily life.
DeFoore provides a blueprint for greater mental clarity and effectiveness in this self-help guide.
“Goodfinding” is “the practice of gratitude for the benefits of your past experiences, appreciation of your present blessings and opportunities, and optimism about the positive possibilities that lie ahead for you,” writes the author, emphasizing what he refers to as the “time travel” aspect of the human mind, capable of pondering the past, assessing the present, and planning for the future. His practice involves three key changes in thinking: a shift from negative to positive thinking, a change from outer focus to inner focus (to remind the reader that one is “the driver of your own car, the captain of your own ship, and the creator of your own reality”), and a pivot from “living at effect” to “living at cause.” DeFoore asserts that by following this practice, one is “learning to use your brilliant mind to its maximum benefit, contributing to your own well-being and that of the world around you.” The author frequently references Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995), assuring his readers that they have brilliant minds (“I’m not saying that because I know anything about your intelligence,” DeFoore writes; “I’m saying that because a brilliant mind is standard equipment in the human organism”). This tone of strong encouragement runs throughout the book, which advises readers on everything from improving their finances (“a positive relationship with money is essential to your ongoing health and happiness”) to the practice of “gratitude journaling.” The author has a large number of abstruse topics to cover, and he’s very much aided in doing so by a clear, straightforward, explanatory style when clarifying his terms: “If a thought, belief, or course of action promotes life, health, and happiness and doesn’t harm you or others,” he writes, “then it is authentically positive.” Such plainspoken bits of wisdom will make DeFoore’s book appealing to readers seeking a bit of reinvention.
An energetic guide to bringing greater intentionality to daily life.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2022
ISBN: 9798765235676
Page Count: 374
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vigorous, timely, necessary defense of creativity.
Eloquent essays on the vital meaning of art.
Arthurs is a senior fellow at the John Brademas Center at NYU, and DiNiscia is Deputy Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives at the Center. In this important collection, the editors gather a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse group of more than two dozen eminent scholars, artists, professionals working in the field of arts and culture, and funders who support the arts. Jazz pianist Fred Hersch (interviewed by Arthurs), composer Tania León, choreographer and dancer Alice Sheppard, and Deborah Willis, historian of African American photography, join the other contributors in responding to the title question with a resounding “yes.” They argue forcefully for the importance of the arts in strengthening social ties, benefiting individuals, fostering community, engaging with the sciences, and recording and sharing human experiences. As music history scholar Karol Berger notes, “when you think that art is inessential and useless,” remember those artists who have been persecuted, marginalized, silenced, incarcerated, and killed because of the power of their creations. Like Berger, several contributors underscore the political significance of the arts. Philosophy professor and ethicist K. Anthony Appiah asserts that art “readies us for our real lives, enlarges our political possibilities, connects us within and across identities.” For Zeyba Rahman and Hussein Rashid, the arts, speaking through the language of imagination, “can bring alive communities and urgent problems that are unfamiliar to us by creating a universal resonance and relatability.” The arts nurture individuals, just as with other forms of sustenance. “All people…yearn for beauty,” writes Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, “also long for grace, also have hearts as well as stomachs that need to be fed and filled. And people inevitably create beauty and grace when they lift their voices in song, move their bodies to music, shape color and form on canvas or in sculpture, or use language to tell stories in ways that delight and surprise.”
A vigorous, timely, necessary defense of creativity.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4798-1262-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A mixed-bag cultural assessment of the internet landscape.
The editor of the New York Times Book Review offers dismayed lamentations on all that is being lost to the internet.
In her latest, Paul analyzes the implications of the internet age, deploying “my grumpy-old-man thoughts and wary skepticism, lashed through with a contrary streak of optimism, accumulated over years of observing the culture and covering its manifestations and effects.” She acknowledges the putative treasures and tools of the internet, but she reminds readers that for every gain, there is a loss—e.g., privacy, civility, or myriad products, services, and practices we may have thought to be timeless. To many, writes the author, we can say good riddance or a fond farewell, though she aches for the loss of others. From handwritten letters to quiet, unoccupied moments, cursive writing to vacations without work (or email), school librarians to newspapers, LPs to mixtapes to the notion of “closure”—so much we thought eternal is quaintly antiquarian or gone forever. As Paul engagingly shows, their replacements aren’t always an advance. Yet one thing Paul neglects to address, save by implication, is the power of “no.” We are not forced in every case to accede to fashion, to all of modern technology’s demands, or to the dictates of contemporary sensibilities. Paul is incisive when she gets serious, as in her regrets on the decline of reading (especially of books), diminishing opportunities for solitude, and our eroding capacity for empathy. But some of her death knells are premature, a stretch, too sweeping, or off-base, while others come off as overly tongue-in-cheek. It’s understandable that Paul writes as if Gen X reality (and that of their children) is a dominant force. Still, there are plenty of people pushing back against the tide in meaningful ways. The author should know there are also 100 ways to resist digital dominance as well.
A mixed-bag cultural assessment of the internet landscape.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13677-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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