A lively, sometimes rueful, always illuminating look at the business of journalism by a knowing practitioner.
The noted journalist recounts his reckonings with sexuality, love, racism, and many other charged topics.
Early on in his memoir, Capehart, best known as a commentator for MSNBC and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post, writes of being known among his Southern cousins as “Mr. Peabody,” the bookishly bespectacled cartoon dog. “And I was a little ‘funny,’” he adds. “That was the gentler f-bomb used for someone believed to be gay back then.” Raised in New Jersey, Capehart writes of being one of the few, if not the only, Black students in his classes, which, accompanied by annual holidays in North Carolina, gave him a precisely contoured understanding of race and racism: “Blackness is always at the mercy of someone else’s judgment. You can be too Black, not Black enough, or not Black at all….Some Black people are eager to take away my Black card. Some white people would rather I not mention my race at all.” A pointed lesson came from his mother, who prophesied that his friendships with white children would turn unequal as the years went by. Sadly, this came to pass, and, despite an elite education and plum jobs in journalism, he would learn that “education and money offer no real protection from racism.” Another pointed lesson came decades later, when Capehart resigned from the Washington Post editorial board after he realized that he would never quite be received as the “interlocutor between Blacks and whites” that he hoped to be: “And once again, it felt like the whiter world let me know where it believed my place to be.” Fortunately, Capehart has refused to accept silence, so that his voice, calmly defiant, is still heard outside the confines of this welcome book.
A lively, sometimes rueful, always illuminating look at the business of journalism by a knowing practitioner.Pub Date: tomorrow
ISBN: 9781538767061
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
