Helping Veterans and Their Families One Book at a Time

It’s rare I post twice on my blog in one day, but on this Veteran’s Day I feel compelled to pause for a moment and say thanks to our service men and women for their hard work and dedication to our country. I’d also like to share a book with you, which might help someone dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Diary of a Vet’s Wife by Nancy MacMillan.

Cover Photo of Diary of a Vet's Wife by Nancy MacMillanNancy took sixteen years to write her book, Diary of a Vet’s Wife: Loving and Living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – A Memoir. It’s the story of her life with a Vietnam Veteran, and the journey they take through PTSD. She shares her story with courage and honesty in hopes of helping others who are dealing with the same issues. Nancy wants others to know they are not alone, and even offers a list of resources available to find help.

Diary of a Vet’s Wife has received numerous 5-star reviews, and is even at the White House in Michelle Obama’s hands.

If that’s not enough to inspire you to pick up this book, this might: Nancy has teamed up with Pets for Vets by donating a portion of the proceeds from her book to help this organization pair shelter dogs with veterans returning from war. Their mission is to help in the healing process and to add another source of comfort and support for those dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Diary of a Vet’s Wife is available on Amazon in paperback and for the Kindle. Spouses and family members of those afflicted with PTSD will find this especially helpful because it’s written from the perspective of somebody who has lived in their shoes. You can also find Nancy online at Blog of a Vet’s Wife.

Here is a hearty thank you to Nancy for sharing her journey to help others, and here’s to our military veterans who have not only battled in war, but who have faced numerous challenges while integrating back into their “old lives,” which of course, will never be the same after what they’ve experienced.

 

Book Review: Roots by Alex Haley

Photo of the cover of RootsIt may seem unusual to write a book review about a novel written well over thirty years ago, but I do so in hopes of inspiring you to pick up this powerhouse tome once again.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family has climbed to the tippy-top of my all-time favorite books.

For those of you who watched Roots, the blockbuster television mini-series in 1977, but never read the novel, you will be dazzled by the written version, and reminded why you were so mesmerized by Alex Haley’s epic story in the first place. You will also appreciate why it topped The New York Times Best Sellers list for twenty-two weeks, and why Haley was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Why did I pick up this book after so many years? Simple. I was inspired by fellow blogger, Debra Eve, who wrote a compelling profile about Alex Haley on her blog, Late Bloomers. Click here to read her piece and see why I immediately headed to my Kindle to download this 700-page masterpiece.

For starters, Continue reading

Book Review–Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

Imagine Book Cover Jonah LehrerThe other night I had the privilege of listening to author, Jonah Lehrer, speak about his best-selling book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

When 31-year old Rhodes Scholar and Wired editor, Lehrer, sauntered onto the stage at UCSB, smiled through his urban-hip geeky glasses, then started spewing insights in his highly-caffeinated manner, I felt like I’d just been hit with a double-espresso shot of inspiration.

Lehrer’s talk flowed just like his book, mixing neuroscience and entertaining anecdotes about famous creative breakthroughs and aha moments.

He shared stories about a wide range of characters—everyone from poets, musicians, and advertising executives to inventors, scientists and educators, deconstructing the process of how we accomplish some of our greatest feats of creativity.

Photo of Jonah Lehrer, author of ImagineWhile Imagine has been blasted in several reviews for scientific inaccuracies (The Guardian and The New York Times, in particular), I find this book irresistible.

None of the information on its own is necessarily groundbreaking, but the way in which Lehrer presents it with his fine writing, connecting the creative dots, and making the science approachable for non-scientific readers, creates a book that is not only delightful, but enlightening.

I knew Imagine was for me when the author kicked off the first chapter describing the genesis of one of Bob Dylan’s best-known songs, Like a Rolling Stone. Dylan, who was burned out at the time—sick of his music and sick of other people’s expectations of him—got on his Triumph motorcycle sans guitar and headed to an empty house in Woodstock. There, after essentially quitting and letting it all go, he ended up creating one of the most inspired pieces of his musical career.

Lehrer hands us one entertaining anecdote after another then peppers it with science, explaining why a particular breakthrough may have occurred. There’s the tale of how masking tape was invented and other common items like Post-it Notes and the Swiffer mop, then there’s the story of how Nike’s famous “Just Do It” logo was created.

 “Every creative journey begins with a problem,” he explains. “It starts with a feeling of frustration, the dull ache of not being able to find the answer. We have worked hard, but we’ve hit the wall. We have no idea what to do next…Thanks to how we’re hardwired, it’s often only at this point, after we’ve stopped searching for the answer, that the answer arrives.”

Haven’t we all experienced this in our creative lives? Just when we’ve nearly thrown in the towel, some nugget of inspiration has fallen into our laps and given us the spark we needed to keep going.

What I like about this book is that Lehrer challenges pre-conceived notions about creativity and tries to demystify the process. He believes we all have the ability to be creative if we cultivate certain thought processes, and if we apply a large dose of grit.

As a writer, I loved being reminded about the grit factor, the need to dig deep and be persistent, putting in hours of hard work—as in the “1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration” notion. Best-selling memoirs don’t just magically happen. They take months, sometimes years of writing and re-writing.

Lehrer quotes neuroscientist, Nancy Andreasen, who says,

“Successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.”

He also quotes famous graphic designer, Milton Glaser, who has the slogan ART IS WORK chiseled in the glass of his studio:

“There’s no such thing as a creative type. As if creative people can just show up and make stuff up. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb.”

My timing in reading this book has been fascinating, as so many of the ideas have infolded in front of me while watching my husband agonize over the creation of an extremely complex piece of art he’s been working on for the past six months. Each part of the design, each medium he’s used (photography, paint, gouache, collage, paper, metal, ink, pencil), and each decision he’s made has been one of intense thought, piles of research, hours of learning new techniques, and even more hours of being hunched over his art table doing the work. Throughout this process he has hit the wall numerous times, felt like he’s lost his mind in even attempting to construct this concept. But just as it’s driving him mad, a solution comes—in the middle of the night, when he’s walking, when he’s listening to NPR, when he’s chatting with colleagues about random subjects, or when he’s looking at other’s art.

While Imagine isn’t a prescriptive book about how to be more creative, Lehrer does offer  a few strategies about remaining creative over time:

  • Travel—the longer the trip, the better.
  • Embrace your status as an outsider. People who aren’t established and haven’t learned the system, often bring the freshest ideas. They don’t know anything so they aren’t afraid to make mistakes. Their “ignorance” or naïveté, gives them an advantage.
  • Do the hard work then play, and then do it again, until the two are one process.
  • Cultivate new colleagues.
  • Embark on a new career or learn a new medium.
  • Live in a city. Urban centers are hubs of creativity because populations are usually diverse and people continually rub shoulders, sharing ideas. Culture, he says, determines creative output, and it’s through sharing information and making connections that we maximize that output.

A few other fun tidbits culled from this book include: the color blue is said to increase creativity, as does caffeine, daydreaming, and relaxing. That must be why I do some of my best thinking in the backyard, sipping iced lattes while writing under blue skies; and why ideas always pop into my head while I’m relaxing in a long, hot shower or going on a delicious, meandering run. It’s all about the dopamine, baby!

The take-away message from this multifaceted book is that creativity is hard-wired in the human brain and we can enrich that quality in ourselves and in our society. “It’s time to create the kind of culture that won’t hold us back,” Lehrer says, “We have to make it easy to become a genius.”

If you’re looking for a book to inspire and stir your imagination, by all means read Imagine, especially if you love a good behind-the-scenes story about how things are created, and how some of our best creations have come from failures. If you’re searching for precise scientific data about how our creative minds work, this book might frustrate you with its reported errors and generalizations. Head to scientific journals instead.

I rate this book a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars.

What are your thoughts about this book? And what are your thoughts about Lehrer’s recent “self-plagiarism” controversy? Drop your two cents into the comment box. I’d love to know what you think.

©Becky Green Aaronson 2012

Book Review: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs by Walter IsaacsonI start this review by confessing I’m exhausted after reading Walter Isaacson’s behemoth authorized biography, Steve Jobs—not because of the mass of this book, but because of the continual upheaval described throughout. I never imagined when I picked it up to read I’d be left reeling, grateful when it finally ended.

Don’t get me wrong, Isaacson’s well-written book deserves kudos, especially the magnitude of his research and interviews, but I had a hard time reading anecdote after anecdote about what an ass Steve Jobs was. It was thoroughly depressing—especially since his genius and passion pump a large dose of admiration through my veins.

This 656-page book, which chronicles Jobs’ life and personality, and his passion for perfection, is based on more than forty interviews with Jobs, conducted over two years – as well as interviews with a large cast of characters—including family members, friends, adversaries, competitors and colleagues.

Isaacson, who has also written biographies about Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, clearly knows how to delve into the complexities of the genius mind. Unfortunately, the picture he paints of Steve Jobs, the man who helped revolutionize personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing, is not pretty.

Jobs was eccentric by any measure of the word—just flash back to his barefoot, hippy commune days or read about his extreme vegan diet or living in a house without furniture—but according to the loudest voices in this book, he was also controlling, manipulative, and down-right mean. One referred to him as an “assaholic.” Another a narcissicist. Another a bully. Many claimed he lived in a “reality distortion field.” Some wondered if he was mildly bi-polar with his extreme highs and lows and his black-and-white view of the world (Jobs thought ideas were either brilliant or “shit,” but never in between).

Whatever the case, there’s no denying the impact he made on our lives with his ability to inspire those around him, see the big picture, and pour himself into the smallest details of each product Apple created. He may not have been warm and cuddly, and he may have had an ego larger than North America, but somehow he was able to bring out the best in people. And with those exceptional people on his team, Apple and Pixar managed to develop some of the most innovative products ever created, merging art and technology.

The most interesting part of this book for me was the history; discovering the origins of many of the Apple products I’ve used over the years, and seeing how the symbiotic relationship between Jobs and Steve Wozniak evolved into the creation of the first personal computer. Being a design-lover, I was also fascinated by Apple’s design guru, Jonathon “Jony” Ive. It’s impossible not to appreciate the depth of thought he and Jobs invested in every detail of every Apple product created—from the handles and buttons to the colors and curves. The two were perfectly paired in their pursuit of exquisite design because neither settled, and both genuinely respected one another.

Then there’s the creation of iTunes and the iPod. Jobs’ passion for music and his vision of making music easily accessible (through Apple’s proprietary and extremely profitable portal and gadgets) not only resuscitated the stagnant music industry—it restructured it, and in the process also helped re-introduce greats like Bob Dylan to a whole new generation of fans.

If I had one criticism of the book, it’s that it felt lopsided toward the dramatic “dark side” of Steve Jobs. While it makes for riveting reading—almost like a Silicon Valley soap opera, with explosive boardroom drama, quirky personalities, illegitimate children, and scorned business partners—there is another side of Steve Jobs hardly mentioned in this book. That’s the side my husband, Jeffrey Aaronson, knew: one that was gracious and generous, intense, yet funny and charismatic. I wonder how many other friends of Steve Jobs weren’t interviewed for this book who had similar experiences?

Also as I read page after page, I couldn’t help feeling sorrow for the Jobs children—in a protective, motherly sort of way. Even though Jobs asked Isaacson to write this book so his kids would know him better, and even though Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell, told Isaacson, “There are parts of (Steve’s) life and personality that are extremely messy…You shouldn’t whitewash it. He’s good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully,” –it’s hard to imagine this would be easy for the kids. They seem worldly and wise, but my hope is they hold off reading it until they are well into adulthood, when their grief has faded, and their canvas of memories has been colored by the paintbrush of life. Perhaps then, this raw and detailed book might feel like the gift their father meant it to be.

For the rest of us, Isaacson’s book is a gift worth reading now. Even if it could have been edited tighter and had a little more balance, it captures an important moment in our history  and reveals the passion, genius, and commitment of the man who changed our modern world (flaws and all).

Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

How about you? What do you think of the book? And what do you think about Steve Jobs?

The Geography of Bliss

Geography of Bliss book cover photograph

As many of you may know, reading is one of my passions in life. Earlier this year I blissfully added another title to my ever-growing, eclectic list of favorite books — The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Place in the World.

In this funny travel memoir, Eric Weiner, veteran NPR foreign correspondent (and self-proclaimed grump), travels the globe intent on finding the happiest places on earth and discovering what makes them that way.

Using both the wisdom of ancient philosophers as well as the modern “science of happiness” to guide him, he spends a year journeying around the world. Starting in The Netherlands, Weiner tracks down Ruut Veenhoven, the proprietor of the World Database of Happiness and the godfather of happiness research. From there he ventures to Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India and back to the United States.

The Geography of Bliss is not only a fascinating travel memoir, but a funny exploration of the science, psychology, and geopolitics of happiness. It also offers a provocative perspective on what happiness is — and isn’t — and where we might find it. 

Wiener raises such questions as:

Porrait of author David Weiner“What if you lived in a country that was fabulously wealthy and no one paid taxes? What if you lived in a country where failure is an option? What if you lived in a country so democratic that you voted seven times a year? What if you lived in a country where excessive thinking is discouraged? Would you be happy then?”

Kirkus Reviews says, “…this wise, witty ramble reads like Paul Theroux channeling David Sedaris on a particularly good day.

As I romped through Weiner’s book, I couldn’t help but think about all the places Jeffrey has traveled in the world, wondering which countries he might think are the happiest.

While Jeffrey doesn’t have data from the World Database of Happiness to back up his conclusions, he was glad to compile a list of some of the happiest places he’s been to in the world. His findings are based purely on personal experience.

__________


Jeffrey’s Top Five Happiest Places in the World

1) Bhutan: Perhaps it’s Bhutan’s way of measuring its well-being–Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Product–or perhaps it’s because Bhutan is a country mostly inhabited by devout Buddhists, but this Himalayan mountain kingdom is steeped in happiness. After working on assignment in Bhutan several times over the past two decades, Jeffrey, like Eric Weiner, ranks it as one of the happiest places on earth. “People seem content without possessions in this remote, landlocked country and find solitude away from the bright lights of nearby bustling civilizations,” Jeffrey says.

Photo of a monk teaching a child in Bhutan

Photo of women in Bhutan

Photo of Bhutan

2) Thailand: Weiner explains that Thailand is one of the happiest places in the world because its residents are taught not to over-think things. While most Americans agonize over every detail of life, Thais are much more relaxed. Jeffrey has been to Thailand too many times to count, and sees the Thais as “Content, confident, and strong people who have a relaxed approach to life.” He reminded me that Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country that has never been colonized. Perhaps their independence has contributed to their inner happiness?

Photo of kid at the feet of a Buddha in Thailand

Photo of a monk wearing Ray Bans

Portrait of a Karen woman in Chaing Rai, Thailand

3) Ireland: It could be the melodic lilt of the Irish accent, or the ease with which Irish people smile, or perhaps how they genuinely enjoy helping others–whatever the case, the Emerald Isle ranks high on Jeffrey’s list of happy places. Let’s not forget the Guinness!

Photo of an musician in Doolin, Ireland

Photo of Dublin, Ireland

Photo of Stephens Green in Dublin, Ireland

4) Micronesia: This island chain dotting the Pacific Ocean just north of the Equator is home to people who enjoy a slow, simple life, warm weather, bountiful food, and a classic island lifestyle still devoid of hordes of tourists. No traffic jams, no deadlines…just happy, mellow people.

Photo of women in traditional dress in Truk, Micronesia

Photo of a fisherman in Micronesia

Aerial photograph of an island in Micronesia

Photo of Micronesia

5) Australia: Jeffrey has worked Down Under multiple times and each time he has been met with happy, active, and laid-back Aussies–particularly in Tasmania. “There seem to be few worries in Australia,” Jeffrey comments.

Photo of a vendor at Salamanca Market in Tasmania, Australia

Photo of a girl in Australia holding a koala

Photo of people swimming in a waterfall in Northern Territory, Australia

Photo of horseback riding in Victoria, Ausralia

In The Geography of Bliss, Weiner visits Moldova, which according to his research, is the unhappiest place on earth. By illustrating what makes Moldovans miserable he reinforces his findings about what makes other people happy–kind of like the Tibetan proverb, “Pain exists to measure pleasure.”

I’m not sure the happiness researchers ever polled people in North Korea though, which is Jeffrey’s number one pick for the unhappiest place on earth.

Photo of North Korean children

Photo of North Korea

Photo of North Korea

Here’s a challenge for you. Take a look at the list below which features many of the places Jeffrey has traveled, and see if you can guess which country he considers one of the saddest places in the world, but whose inhabitants are still some of the happiest people he’s ever met.

Antigua, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Chile, China, Christmas Island, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, East Timor, England, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, North Korea, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand Tibet, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

Leave your answer in the comment section and find out the answer on Thursday! Also, I’d love to know YOUR IDEA of the happiest place on earth!