A solid book of union-organizing advice that will be useful to a wide range of readers.
A veteran union organizer offers pointers for those who are new to organizing and activism.
In this book of career advice, Oedy, the author of Bigger Labor (2008), shares stories from his decades of work as an organizer. The 365 pieces of advice here range from brief reminders to return phone calls promptly and learn the names of contacts to longer discussions of how to identify allies to one’s cause, how to oversee certification processes, and how to be a strong public speaker—all illustrated with specific examples from Oedy’s career. Much of the book covers topics that are particularly relevant to trade-union organizing, although portions will be applicable to readers in other kinds of activist and organizing roles (“Do you know your Collective Bargaining Agreement inside-and-out?”), but other portions contain information that will be of use to anyone in the workforce, such as “Set Big Goals for Yourself.” Oedy takes deep dives into some topics, as in a list of 101 reasons why people join labor unions, which covers obvious and less obvious motivations. At other points, the book’s approach is offbeat but clearly drawn from experience, as when the author advises readers to avoid keeping golf clubs in their cars (“eventually someone is going to assume this is how you spend your days when you should be working”). Oedy’s conversational tone makes the book an enjoyable read, and readers will feel as if they’re listening in on a veteran teaching a newbie the tricks of the trade. Indeed, readers who have no knowledge of organizing will have no trouble following the text, as the author follows his own advice and avoids using acronyms and jargon.
A solid book of union-organizing advice that will be useful to a wide range of readers.Pub Date: July 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4566-3330-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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