Two genial, upbeat guides for life’s later chapters.
Tips for women for growing older with panache.
Hecht, a retired orthopedic surgeon who died at the age of 93, just months before this book was published, and award-winning actor Goldberg, who is 66, share wisdom, anecdotes, and pithy one-liners on a host of topics that concern aging women. Among the many issues they cover are dealing with inevitable aches and pains, addressing hearing impairment and short-term memory loss (something Hecht experienced), choosing what to wear, caring for aging skin, dating, making new friends, remaining independent when needing outside assistance, and napping when necessary. Most of the advice comes from Dr. Hecht, with Goldberg adding her “two cents” to selected chapters. Hecht rings in on matters medical, social, psychological, and practical to help readers navigate the challenges of growing older. “Connections, continuous learning, and being socially active,” she advises, are crucial to health and happiness. She enthusiastically celebrates the pleasures and surprises of excursions. As for dating, while Goldberg prefers meeting on Zoom rather than in person, Hecht is open to dating and sharing activities, including sex. She warns against using dating services and apps, though, suggesting that it’s better to meet someone through friends or by participating in groups. Hecht brings considerable authority to her advice about navigating the medical system: finding a doctor or surgeon, making the most of visits, getting a second opinion, and dealing with one’s fear of surgery (or even fear of going to the dentist). She offers a set of exercises to do in bed that make getting up easier, and she encourages aerobic, toning, and range-of-motion activities, such as swimming, yoga, and golf, which keep the body fit. Most of all, the authors urge readers to forget assumptions that come with being 60 or 70 or 90: “You’re a guru,” the authors insist. “You are not a number.”
Two genial, upbeat guides for life’s later chapters.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7852-4164-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper Horizon
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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