A poignant reflection on life after retirement and cancer.
A retiree and cancer survivor recalls his post-entrepreneurial life in this memoir.
Born in St. Louis in 1941, McIntyre spent nearly two decades in the corporate trenches working for Procter & Gamble before branching out on his own for the next 30 years, founding a foodservice sales and marketing agency. In 2010, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and decided to sell his business while undergoing treatment. The story of four life-altering months in 2010, during which he transitioned into retirement while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment, lie at the center of his first memoir, There Are No Answers Here, Only Questions (2023). In this follow-up, the author covers the next 14 years, from 2010-2024, as he recovered from cancer and forged a new life after retirement. Like many who leave their careers, he grappled with adjusting to a new life. “My company had been my ‘identity,’” he recalls, “But now, with my identity gone, who was I?” As detailed in the book, he ultimately found a new purpose through exercise and community service. Guided by the motto “poco a poco” (little by little), he rebuilt his physical health, first by walking in the backyard, then by traversing a parking lot to get to his car, and eventually by running short distances. Ultimately, he became an avid swimmer and cycler—until he met another setback when he was thrown from his bicycle after being struck by an inattentive driver and sustained a brain injury.
Embracing the Latin maxim Per Adversa Satisfactio Est (“satisfaction through adversity”), McIntyre is relentlessly optimistic, emphasizing how each setback led him to feel greater gratitude for his loved ones. He also found a new post-retirement identity in the act of giving back, working with Habitat for Humanity building houses in Charlotte, North Carolina, and El Salvador. The author’s Christian faith is recurring theme—the work contains multiple biblical references, though McIntyre never proselytizes. Indeed, he embraces a “faith that transcends faith,” emphasizing the “oneness of all things” that “binds us together.” While the text includes the occasional flashback to the author’s years in corporate America or his experiences as a fraternity brother at a small, liberal arts college, the memoir’s unique emphasis on McIntyre’s post-retirement life—with its humbling array of identity crises, health scares, and the author’s decision to move with his wife to a continuous care retirement community—makes the book stand out in a genre stereotypically defined by self-aggrandizement. McIntyre’s writing style blends poignant reflections with often humorous, self-deprecating anecdotes. While inside an MRI machine stripped down to his underwear with a traumatic brain injury, for instance, the author recalls utilizing one of his meditation practices in which he repeated “Gracias a Dios”(Thank God) while taking deep breaths; it was during this moment of Zen focus and gratitude that the medical technician told him to “stop it and breathe like a normal person.” Another chapter recalls his failed attempts at becoming a novelist: He put chapters of a lighthearted rom-com story on his blog until he realized “no one was reading it anymore.” These moments of humorous self-awareness, blended with the author’s emotional maturity, make for a sincere, engaging memoir.
A poignant reflection on life after retirement and cancer.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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