A charming use of pasta creation as a learning metaphor for managers.
A seasoned administrator employs the analogy of making ravioli to convey key team concepts in this debut business book.
In his introduction, Manganiello, who currently works for a Delaware-based nonprofit and has held several other managerial positions in the public and private sectors, notes that his childhood memory of his grandparents’ homemade ravioli inspired this book. Even he had “perceived the planning, preparation and work that went into their making.” He then unspools an instructive tale featuring 10-year-old cousins Abigail and Theresa, who oversleep and miss out on the delicious ravioli whipped up by their 60-year-old grandfathers, twin brothers Alfredo and Mario. The men then tell the girls how they, too, had failed to savor some ravioli by similarly failing to get out of bed at the same age, but then learned how to make the pasta. They ultimately built a successful ravioli business by visiting various people (including relatives) to fully understand how the dish was concocted, respectfully handling their growing teams, and responding appropriately to many challenges, including saying no to an order that was too large to be handled in the time frame requested. Their tale concludes on page 96, with the text then transitioning to a flash-forward of the girls, now graduated from college, thanking their grandfathers, who are in their 80s, for their insights. The women share the themes that they’ve learned, grouped under the acronym RAVIOLI (with “V” including one-paragraph discussions of “vision,” “values,” “variety,” and “valuable”). Recipes to make ravioli dough and filling as well as accompanying meatballs and sauces complete the text. Manganiello has certainly chosen a more enjoyable, indeed mouth-watering, product for his business discussion than those classic— and boring—widgets. He sprinkles a bit too many “Ravioli Rules” callout boxes throughout this narrative, however, which serves to interrupt the flow of the grandfathers’ saga. The author also introduces an array of less-than-memorable secondary characters the two men hire or otherwise interact with. Still, the women’s acronym becomes a delightful, succinct wrap-up for this pleasingly folksy, intergenerational tale, with the included recipes an especially tasty takeaway.
A charming use of pasta creation as a learning metaphor for managers.Pub Date: July 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9887532-0-4
Page Count: 126
Publisher: TribeSound
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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