A searching exploration of recovery and its discontents, mixing sharp criticism with a compelling story of redemption.
Eade promotes Eastern philosophy as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous in this insightful self-help guide.
The author draws lessons about addiction and recovery from his own struggle with alcoholism, which almost cost him his liver. Much of the book is a critique of AA, which he attended for about five years. While acknowledging that it benefits millions of alcoholics, Eade faults the organization for being too doctrinaire, too hidebound, too rooted in 20th-century WASP patriarchy (which alienates many women, people of color, and non-Christians), and too fixated on a concept of alcoholic powerlessness that encourages a victim mentality. As an alternative, he extols a set of programs informed by Hinduism and Buddhism, including “Yoga and the Twelve Steps™” classes and the recovery groups Refuge Recovery and Recovery Dharma. In these communities, the author learned to let go of the fear and shame at the heart of his addiction, detach from his ego and listen to his inner self, lift the veil of worldly delusions, and pursue an oceanic oneness with all being. On a practical level, he learned to quell the anxiety and mental agitation that had fueled his substance abuse with deep-breathing exercises and a daily prayer cycle in which he thanked the Source and Mother Earth for reminding him to “ease pain and suffering,” “forgive Trump today,” and undertake other spiritually edifying tasks. Following this regimen, the author reports, he overthrew the “merciless tyrant” of addiction. Eade’s narrative combines a plangent memoir of dysfunction with an erudite disquisition on the psychology and philosophy of addiction. He deploys vivid, captivating metaphors, as when he likens addiction to a plunge into a Dantean underworld: “I looked up at the long upward climb back and gave in to despair. There was just no way that I could make my way back to the top of that steep, slimy slope.” At the same time, he offers rapturous encouragement (“You will find peace and serenity. I promise”) that many readers will take to heart.
A searching exploration of recovery and its discontents, mixing sharp criticism with a compelling story of redemption.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781958211328
Page Count: 104
Publisher: HigherLife Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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