A gracefully distilled account of a remarkable life in business and beyond.
Hormel’s memoir chronicles his rise in business from the 19th into the 20th century.
James C. Hormel, a former U.S. ambassador, stumbled upon a memoir written by his paternal grandfather, George A. Hormel, the founder of Hormel Foods, which produces Spam and other food brands. The autobiography begins in 1873, when Hormel was 13 and a nationwide economic panic hobbled his father’s tannery in Toledo, Ohio, and compelled him to quit school and seek work. Hormel moved to Chicago to work for his uncle, and by 19, he had been employed for six years in three different industries. He was a talented wool buyer for years, but a lonely life on the road was unfulfilling; he became too fond of gambling and struggled to get ahead. With a $500 loan from his boss, the entrepreneur started his own business in Austin, Minnesota—a general supply depot for the meat industry. Hormel weathered extraordinary challenges—an economic depression in 1907, disastrous floods, poor crop harvests, and hog epidemics—and finally built a business successful enough to list on the Chicago Stock Exchange in 1929. When the stock market crashed, he retired and handed over the company’s reins to his son, Jay. In elegant, charming prose, the author also recounts lessons he learned from his greatest influences, first and foremost his father, John George Hormel, about a wide range of subjects including the nature of business, the intersection of commerce and government, and his religious convictions. One of the recurrent themes of the book—another lesson delivered by his father and beautifully related by Hormel—is the balance between one’s trust in God and one’s reliance upon oneself: “Like all deeply religious men, he believed in the ultimate justice and wisdom of Providence. But he clearly saw that since men were the instruments on this earth through whose free will their Maker had chosen to manifest Himself, progress inevitably waited on the speed with which they comprehended their possibilities.” Hormel’s account of technological innovation in relation to business is extraordinarily prescient and should be of instructive interest to thoughtful entrepreneurs. In an age saturated with business-driven self-help books offering flimsy and familiar counsel, this is a more serious, historically fascinating alternative. Black-and-white family photos are included.
A gracefully distilled account of a remarkable life in business and beyond.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9976-8580-0
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Hormel Historic Home
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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