A poignant and potent self-help business book.
A serial entrepreneur shares her personal successes and failures in an introspective debut.
Fitzsimmons isn’t negative about startups. After all, she managed to launch six firms herself, five of which are still in business, including her current virtual-reality venture, Custom Reality Services. But two main themes of her book are that being an entrepreneur “is a struggle against reality” and that “failure is synonymous with iteration”—concepts that will test the mettle of even the most optimistic dreamer. That said, Fitzsimmons’ “field guide” is steeped in personal insights, many of which show how she forged success out of failure, and she supplements these with stories of other entrepreneurs who overcame adversity. Unlike typical how-to business books, this manual concentrates almost exclusively on developing the self, as evidenced by such chapter titles as “Self-Awareness,” “Sighting Your Summit,” “Self-Belief,” and “Focus.” Indeed, there’s a very personal slant to the book, overall; Fitzsimmons offers numerous accounts of her family, her health problems, and business setbacks. But there’s also a clear sense of growth and progress as the author upliftingly notes how all of her experiences helped to strengthen her along the way. Fitzsimmons’ self-analysis is engaging, but so too is her authoritative counsel as well as her well-designed self-help exercises. The author also shares useful tools, such as “The Relationship Matrix” and “The Decision Matrix,” to help readers navigate entrepreneurial waters. Her perspective should be invaluable to novice entrepreneurs who may not fully understand the challenges that lie ahead of them. A chapter on seeking funding is compelling, if not surprising; Fitzsimmons makes it clear that she’s not a fan of venture capital for most startups. A unique aspect of the book is the author’s emphasis on confronting self-imposed conditions, such as “entrenchment”: “when our startup is draining our life force, it is easy to entrench and think that persevering is our only option.”
A poignant and potent self-help business book.Pub Date: April 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0285-4
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A history, published in Britain shortly after the author wrote it in 1937, of the few months surrounding the Barcelona Telephone Exchange riots and what the writer determines as the Communist betrayal of all of Spain's anti-fascist forces. The crux of Orwell's writing is to show the ridiculous misrepresentations of the actual happenings in Barcelona and on the front and their meaning for the rest of Spain. The Communists were joined with the Government. Another anti-fascist faction was the P.O.U.M. or anarchist militia. They were closely allied with socialist worker movements, ready to build up a workers' revolution. In the beginning when issues were but hazily defined, Orwell joined the P.O.U.M. and fought with them- at the front. The Communists, considering anarchist-socialist revolutionary policies as presumptive, sought successfully to purge the P.O.U.M. and rendered them through messy journalism, coercive police methods, withdrawal of arms, false reports- as Trotskyists, pro-Franco, anything but the potent patriotic force they were. Thus republican Spain lost a power that could have helped beat Franco. Orwell's report is as exciting as it is meditative. With his quiet exactitude the midnight skirmishes, the political issues, and the utter futility of war come clearly into focus. Perhaps not a book to create sensation in a day when much of what happened at Barcelona has been realized, but one enlightening in terms of showing the war way toward mutual understanding and fair play.
Pub Date: May 15, 1952
ISBN: 1849025975
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1952
With this detailed, versatile cookbook, readers can finally make Momofuku Milk Bar’s inventive, decadent desserts at home, or see what they’ve been missing.
In this successor to the Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar’s pastry chef hands over the keys to the restaurant group’s snack-food–based treats, which have had people lining up outside the door of the Manhattan bakery since it opened. The James Beard Award–nominated Tosi spares no detail, providing origin stories for her popular cookies, pies and ice-cream flavors. The recipes are meticulously outlined, with added tips on how to experiment with their format. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author. Still, it’s a bit more sophisticated than the typical Betty Crocker fare. In addition to a healthy stock of pretzels, cornflakes and, of course, milk powder, some recipes require readers to have feuilletine and citric acid handy, to perfect the art of quenelling. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. A refreshing, youthful cookbook that will have readers happily indulging in a rising pastry-chef star’s widely appealing treats.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-72049-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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