The business she’s in is almost beside the point: Corcoran could be selling plumbing supplies, and the story would still fly.
A New York City real-estate bigwig ebulliently describes the creation and life of her business, pegging her account to anecdotally rich advice acquired at her mother's knee.
In the fierce, insular NYC property market, it takes a tough and smart customer to survive, let alone get ahead, and Corcoran is just such a creature. She grew up not poor, but mighty cramped, with nine siblings and one bathroom on their single floor in a three-family house in Edgewater, New Jersey. Corcoran explains that she quickly learned to have a sense of humor and a nimble pair of feet, while her mother doled out the homespun wisdom. All of this might simply be cute, except that Barbara Ann actually applied Mom’s horse sense to the running of her business; she draws parallels between the situations in which her mother offered the advice and those in which she made use of them at work. None of Mom’s counsel will sweep you off your feet: perception can create reality; maximize the positive and minimize the negative; be honest and fair; don't be afraid to bully the bully; organize yourself (“socks are always in the sock drawer”); “offer the bigger piece, and yours will taste even better.” What makes Corcoran different is the way she deploys them every day in a business better known for secrecy and backstabbing. No shrinking violet, though mercifully free of bluster, she has some dishy stories about her days in the market, especially regarding Donald Trump, “the King of the Least for the Most.” But readers will likely be more enamored of those flashbacks to her youth and the ways in which the Corcoran family made vibrant what could easily have ground them down. Mom takes the cake here, but you have to toast Barbara Ann for applying her dictums.
The business she’s in is almost beside the point: Corcoran could be selling plumbing supplies, and the story would still fly.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2003
ISBN: 1-59184-002-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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