A lively and heartfelt, if sometimes-trite, series of inspirational observations about the keys to great leadership.
A motivational manual focuses on the importance of human connection.
“To live balanced, authentic, real, wholehearted lives, we humans must connect with others,” writes Coombs (Don’t Just Manage—Lead!, 2015). “To connect on a meaningful level, we must take off our masks and tell our stories.” In the course of his aphoristic, fast-paced chapters, the author blends his personal tales with broader, more general observations about the nature of leadership in both business and family life. The older he gets, he confesses, “the more I see the value in true connection and the emptiness of a society created around the falsehoods of maintaining a perfect life online.” The axis on which most of his advice turns is a series of L-words: laughing, loving, learning, leading, all of them components of “Living Large.” He delves in detail into each of these L-characteristics, expanding on the value of laughter in leadership capacities, for instance. He also explores the significant role learning can play at every stage of the leadership process (“For leaders to grow their organizations,” he writes, “they must become not only learning leaders but also teaching leaders”). The author’s prose is easygoing and clear, and his deployment of vivid personal stories (including some funny tales of being a hapless parent) is skillfully done, neatly balancing the bigger picture sections that are designed to hammer home the key points. The balance is extremely important because those bigger picture portions often lapse into clichés like be “the best you can be” and “you will learn more about how to live a joyful life from the school of hard knocks than from any classroom you will ever attend.” The sentiments of “Living Large” are well considered—the emphasis on humility and laughter is especially welcome—and hardly benefit from such threadbare expressions.
A lively and heartfelt, if sometimes-trite, series of inspirational observations about the keys to great leadership.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9986254-1-6
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Scrivener Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience...
This compelling memoir of a German girl’s bitter, frightening life reveals the horrors visited upon an average family caught between two of the most cruel dictators in history.
Amidst the copious histories of Hitler and Stalin, historians have often neglected the horrific tales of innocent girls like Schulze, who early in World War II survived Nazi occupation, then was forced to hide in a secret attic for months at war’s end to escape sexual attacks from the invading rampages of the Russians. The Russian soldiers pillaged her tiny village of Doelitz, where women scrubbed their faces with ashes and dirt to make themselves unappealing to the Red Army’s serial rapists. With professional writer Collier’s help, Schulze tells a ground-level story that is at once haunting and shocking in its narration of ordinary, peaceful lives shattered forever by war. The small, poignant touches are riveting–the family’s favorite horse being dragged away to haul artillery; their argument about whether to follow Nazi orders to display Hitler’s portrait. Her inspiring story concludes with the long, harrowing struggle to escape to West Germany, followed by a months-long wait for a berth on a ship bound for America. Her first tastes of ice cream and pineapple aboard the ship are a fitting climax to a tale of never-ending stress and fear–and ultimately, redemption.
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience of all ages.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-58348-072-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.
An intriguing if sometimes ponderous examination of man's place in the universe.
Bartow creates a systematic philosophic framework for integrating concepts from diverse disciplines, such as astrology, psychology, metaphysics, theology, eastern and western mysticism and quantum physics. The author uses complex–and often unintelligible–diagrams to create a visual representation of the corporeal and spiritual universe, building layers of complexity that illustrate the dynamic interaction of mind, matter, energy and spirituality. He divides man’s perception of the universe into objective and subjective categories with distinctive subcategories, using piano keys as the primary metaphor–the black keys represent the objective planes, embodied in the concrete laws of science, and the white keys represent the subjective interior planes. The author makes frequent use of the philosophies from such ancient traditions as the Kabbalah, Buddhism, the teachings of Don Juan and Tibetan thought. The massive scope of Bartow’s vision eventually becomes overwhelming, and the esoteric nature of the study will deter casual readers. Ultimately, however, the text will prove thought-provoking and rewarding for the diligent.
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9760863-0-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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