An effective amalgam of satire and practicality, McCammon’s functional playbook takes the guesswork and much of the mystery...
A handy how-to guide on cultivating and applying today’s most useful business skills.
Despite its relentlessly droll delivery, media editor and etiquette columnist McCammon’s office primer provides pages of valuable advice for anyone already working in or hoping to score a rewarding office job. Drawing from his personal experience, the author knows well the insecurities that can sabotage self-confidence and productivity. After years editing an in-flight magazine, the author was recruited in 2005, at age 30, for an editing job at Esquire, a position for which he considered himself seriously underqualified. “I didn’t know how to work at a big magazine and I didn’t know how to live in a city like New York,” he writes. Yet a decade later, the author remains with the publication, and he chronicles his Manhattan awkwardness (spun into learning experiences) while dispensing the proven employment tactics that made him a comfortable and more self-assured professional. McCammon’s material covers many situations and common conundrums encountered both inside and outside of the business world. Job-seeking readers will scrutinize chapters on assertive interviewing strategies (express authenticity and candor), the importance of discretion, effective speechwriting, and honing underappreciated talents like small talk and firm handshakes. McCammon’s checklist on maintaining proper office decorum encompasses everything from emailing and social media restraint to sartorial guidelines, avoiding “assholery” (there’s a quiz), and the timeless values of punctuality, contact, and a positive attitude. Though some of his advice won’t resonate with every reader (“apologies are purely emotional”; “one drink is just the right amount”), the author’s alacrity at dispensing these office-centric gems is infectious. The condensed appendices at the end of the book include a reading list and a refreshing rundown of general business rules.
An effective amalgam of satire and practicality, McCammon’s functional playbook takes the guesswork and much of the mystery out of job searches and appropriate office etiquette.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95502-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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