A winning opening volume in the publisher's new Conservation Leadership series.
A small-town Texan looks back on a life in national politics and conservation.
A writer-in-residence at the Thinking Like a Mountain Foundation in Fort Davis, Texas, Bristol fell in love with America’s national parks while working one youthful summer on a trail crew at Glacier National Park. He then spent years in politics and fundraising gaining the skills and experience that would later allow him to champion the national park system. Growing up in a political family, Bristol came of age in Austin in the “relatively gentle” 1950s. After attending the University of Texas, he joined the young people flocking to the New Frontier in Washington, D.C., where he worked for years as a party activist in the shadows of Hubert Humphrey, Bob Strauss, Lloyd Bentsen and other Democratic figures. In the mid-1970s, Bristol discovered the National Park Foundation, which raises private funds for the parks, and decided he wanted to serve on its board. His eventual appointment, made by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 1994, came at a quiet time for the foundation, which had fallen into doldrums in the Reagan era. As Bristol explains, he seized the opportunity to help revitalize the group, attracting significant financial support from corporations and the Rockefeller family. National parks reflect “all the best parts of our democracy,” he writes, revealing the passion that he brought as a consultant to the PBS series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. He later created the Texas Coalition for Conservation, a nonprofit advocate for the parks of his home state.
A winning opening volume in the publisher's new Conservation Leadership series.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60344-762-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Texas A&M Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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