A well-organized fount of executive prudence.
A retired business executive draws practical lessons from a long corporate career.
Books on business leadership are hardly in short supply, but the biographical ones tend to highlight the careers of those few who climbed to the top of their industries, leaving a whole range of executive experience unrepresented. Furthermore, debut author Kahn observes, professional fulfillment is available to those who don’t ultimately rise to C-suite status, though business schools do little to prepare their students to thoughtfully govern their own personal searches for job satisfaction. To that end, the author presents an autobiographical account of his career in the form of a series of case studies—each one presents an occupational challenge, Kahn’s response to it, and a brief summary of the lessons he learned. The author went to Purdue University on a Naval ROTC scholarship, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1957. After leaving the Marines in 1960, he graduated from Harvard Business School in 1963 and secured a job at Procter & Gamble working on iconic brands like Joy and Tide. He would have other employers, but this institutional triad—the Marines, Harvard, and Procter & Gamble—furnished the fulcrum of lessons that strike him as the most impactful as well as the ones of which he’s proudest. Written in informally lucid prose, Kahn’s reflections break up into two categories: the more narrowly professional ones account for a wide range of significant decisions. For example, he helpfully supplies counsel regarding how to choose an employer and when to resign from one. The second category of advice sensibly covers the intersection of the professional and the personal—the author discusses the nature of career fulfillment, family life, and the importance of leaving a legacy of which one can be proud. Much of the advice is so common-sensical it seems hardly worth mentioning: “The basic thing I learned was to think and to use my head.” But some of it is much more thought-provoking, including Kahn’s views on the balance between work and family, and is likely to be especially useful to young executives early in their careers.
A well-organized fount of executive prudence.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5471-0253-2
Page Count: 142
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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