An inspirational—and more than a little grandiose—series of business world insights.
A guide offers advice on achieving success in business and life.
In his book, Proctor (It’s Not About the Money, 2018) invites readers to imagine traveling around the world and talking to the wealthiest, happiest people. If they asked all these folks the same question—what is the key to your success?—their answers would always boil down to the same things. The author then asks: Wouldn’t you like to know what those things are? Proctor lays out those answers in his manual, broken down into 12 “principles” grouped around core ideas. The author opens by assuring his readers that they were born with the keys to success and only need to realize that in order to begin living their best lives. “Misunderstanding this part keeps the masses in the foothills,” he writes, “wandering aimlessly, never climbing their mountains, frequently frustrated, often angry, and too often miserably disappointed with themselves and their accomplishments.” This delineation between winners and losers runs throughout the work, with Proctor asserting that “decision makers go to the top, and those who do not make decisions seem to go nowhere.” He raises several key general concepts, like “goals,” “persistence,” and “creativity,” and in each case quotes from business inspiration standards like Winston Churchill and delivers wide-reaching insights and encouragements. Some of these will strike longtime readers of business books as very familiar—things like “risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing” and “you cannot escape from a prison if you do not know you are in one.” Less familiar—and more questionable—are much broader claims like “We are all spiritual beings. There is no one person who has more power, more knowledge or access to greater resources than any other person.” Or “I am responsible for my life, for my feelings, and for every result I get.” These extravagant contentions are perhaps not out of line with a book that asserts: “You are one with the infinite.”
An inspirational—and more than a little grandiose—series of business world insights.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72250-191-4
Page Count: 220
Publisher: G&D Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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