A quick-reading and thought-provoking look at the new nature of succeeding.
Advani and Goldsmith offer a new conception of achievement in the modern world.
Referring to such perennial bestsellers as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich(1937), the authors write in their debut nonfiction collaboration that “classic books on achievement define it based on linear progression to accomplish a goal,” but “modern achievement is a new way of thinking about the journey to success and fulfillment that values the process of reaching your goals and objectives as much as their attainment.” Advani (CEO of an NGO that prepares youth for employment and entrepreneurship) and Goldsmith (founder of a firm that advises CEOs and management groups) have set their book in a world very different from the one in which pursuing those old-fashioned linear achievements made sense: a more uncertain modern world in which beginning any future project requires a leap of faith. In this new context, the authors urge readers to “keep putting yourself in environments that allow you to learn about yourself and look for the possibilities for designing you.” Their guidance for navigating this new world takes the form of an approach they refer to as “Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle,” a “human-centered framework for thinking differently about achievement in a rapidly changing world.” The chapters that elaborate on “Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle” are interspersed with insets of a more personal nature with attention-grabbing headlines like “Be a good mentee” (the authors remind readers that mentorship is a two-way street), “Invest in your reputation,” and “Don’t leave them wanting less.” Much of this advice is fairly cliched stuff, but Advani and Goldsmith mostly avoid rehashing familiar business-lit talking points. They speak instead, very effectively, to a leaner and more self-aware corporate world, more decentralized and hybridized, and their “Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle” approach requires an entrepreneurial mindset: “You [must] have the ability to pivot, adjust, and adapt to take advantage of and pursue those opportunities and to recover when things do not go as intended.”
A quick-reading and thought-provoking look at the new nature of succeeding.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781637558256
Page Count: 424
Publisher: 100 Coaches Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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