Compelling stories at the intersection of entrepreneurial aspirations, personal obligations, and public policy.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist reports on how small-business owners in northeast Pennsylvania—and one in New York City—weathered the challenges posed by the pandemic.
In the best of times, running a small business is a precarious proposition; the pandemic made it nearly impossible. In early 2020, Rivlin, author of Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.―How the Working Poor Became Big Business, among other books, set out to document how a handful of businesses dealt with the precipitous decline in customers, unrelenting mortgage and utility bills, and costs that escalated as supply chains faltered. Among others, these include Vilma’s Hair Salon, Cusumano’s Italian restaurant, Lech’s Pharmacy, J.R.’s Hallmark, and Sol Cacao, a chocolate bar business. During the pandemic, owners worried about their employees and rethought their businesses. They navigated shifting shutdown orders and mask mandates and applied for financial assistance from the federal and state governments. Making matters worse was the lack of a “coordinated federal plan”; each state made its own rules. In addition, there were the constant threats posed by large restaurant and pharmaceutical chains, retail behemoths such as Walmart, and, of course, Amazon. These large corporations not only undercut their prices; they also gutted the downtown centers that brought in customers. Politicians might celebrate small businesses for being essential to living in a community and for embodying the independent spirit that ostensibly defines the American character, but economic policy always favors big business. That many businesses survived was due, in part, to the loyalty of employees and customers, the support of local business associations, and governmental grants and loans that carried them through the worst of the pandemic. For Rivlin, though, most important were business owners’ “creativity and fortitude,” the tenacity and improvisational talent to get the job done.
Compelling stories at the intersection of entrepreneurial aspirations, personal obligations, and public policy.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-306596-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Useful, credible and smart.
A handy guide to personal finance and a convincing argument for improved financial literacy.
Secrets is a near-encyclopedic compilation of financial advice from Mincher, a self-made multimillionaire. (He made his first million by the age of 25.) And though much of his wisdom derives solely from his own experience, the seven-figure investment portfolio that backs it up is difficult to deny. In many ways, the story of how the author made his money is as interesting as the financial counsel he provides. A born businessman, he formed his first company in high school and won awards as a young entrepreneur. He earned his fortune as the owner of a charter-bus service and, later, as a regional telecom baron. Mincher offers brief chapters on just about every conceivable area of financial inquiry, from credit checks to buying a car to investing in the stock market. His volume works more effectively as a reference than a how-to to be read in a few sittings. But as such it is very valuable indeed; clearly organized and helpfully broken up into bite-size sections, the information is easy to digest. Underpinning it all is the author’s fervent belief that most people need to know more about their money. Mincher has an autodidact’s ambivalence toward traditional education; a college drop-out, he preaches “street smarts” and inveighs a bit too frequently against odd targets like high-school calculus in his introduction. Nonetheless, his call for more and better financial education rings true, especially as subprime lenders have recently wreaked havoc on world economic markets by preying on the financially non-savvy.
Useful, credible and smart.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9797003-0-9
Page Count: 426
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A random walk through the entrepreneurial outskirts of postindustrial commerce and show biz with a tour guide whose spiel has a nasty edge to it. Drawing on stories he has reported as a CBS TV correspondent, Geist (Little League Confidential, 1992, etc.) offers a discontinuous series of short takes on offbeat enterprises that have yielded the venturesome Americans who launched or embraced them modest amounts of fame and fortune. Cases in point range from the leading breeder of racing pigs through the inventor of the car- crushing leviathans known as monster trucks and Florida's top vendor of recycled golf balls to the two struggling illustrators who created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Covered as well are the proprietors of nail-care salons, traffic-safety schools, and the seemingly endless parade of lurid talk shows on daytime television, plus the resourceful aerospace engineer who first thought of blasting bullet holes in wearing apparel as a lucrative fashion statement. In most instances, unfortunately, the author goes beyond poking gentle fun at his subjects and their antics; indeed, he invariably holds them up to gratuitously savage ridicule. Nor can Geist resist any opportunity to show what a clever fellow he is, even when a straightforward account of junk entertainment like ``American Gladiators'' could speak for itself. All too often the effect is akin to the tedious pall cast by a stand-up comic who, bedazzled by his own wit, can't bear to leave the stage. While the author closes with backhanded homage to Judge Roy Hofheinz (builder of Houston's pace-setting Astrodome), a start-to-finish audit of his other vignettes reveals that they reach no particularly startling conclusions about the latter-day US or any other substantive matter. Sporadically amusing but wholly dispensable.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13883-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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