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LEARNING FROM UPHEAVAL

Name: LEARNING FROM UPHEAVAL
Author: Bill Sandy
ISBN: 978-1936343218

by Bill Sandy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 2012

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Sandy (Forging the Productivity Partnership, 1990), a retired CEO who had a front seat view of the automotive industry post–World War II, provides a thorough accounting of his role helping to shape the business of human performance improvement.

The roots of a long career counseling companies on adapting to change began with Sandy’s economically turbulent childhood. When Sandy was 4, in 1933, his father died and because his father’s wealth was wiped out in the Great Depression, the family moved from the upper echelons of society to the struggling middle class. After logging some journalistic and advertising experience (some while still in college), Sandy’s career began in earnest in 1953 at the Jam Handy Organization, an innovator in distance learning. Thrilled with the creative culture and eager to spread his wings, he opened Sandy Corporation in 1976 with the blessing of his mentor. Sandy was particularly adept at seeing a given economic reality in front of him and finding ways for both his own company and his clients to adapt. Sandy Corporation advised corporations like Chevrolet, then GM as a whole and later, companies outside the auto industry. Yet Sandy doesn’t give readers a broad understanding of how the company operates. Crammed with names, titles and particular client undertakings, Sandy’s text hews close to the specifics. When the author does step back to reflect on and outline his hard-won wisdom, it’s a welcome change. His insights are astute: “If people don’t do what you want them to do…it’s generally one of three things. They don’t know what you want…They don’t know how to do it…Or they don’t think it’s worth a big effort.” One wishes Sandy would have let the lessons rather than the facts of his career take center stage. Though chock-full of useful nuggets, the meticulous, chronological retelling of a long career can be tedious.

Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012

ISBN: 978-1936343218

Page Count: 320

Publisher: The Peppertree Press

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.