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EXECUTIVE BLUES

DOWN AND OUT IN CORPORATE AMERICA

Corporate flack Meyer (The Memphis Murders, not reviewed) tells his own story, from rags to riches to outplacement hell. It's the diary of an insulted man. In 38 years of nonstop employment the author progressed from soda jerk to newspaper reporter to VP in charge of public relations for McDonnell Douglas. Then, one day, he personally was downsized (read ``fired''). Pushing age 50, equipped with a financial departure package and a briefcase bulging with rÇsumÇs, Meyer scoured the land for suitable employment in an environment he had come to loathe. Put aside were the daydreamspiloting a tractor- trailer out West, fry cooking while wearing a paper hat, or simple armed robberythere was the family to consider. After fruitless peregrinations and hopeless quests, dispiriting networking and mendacious headhunters, he found a likely spot with a manufacturer. That soon proved a mistake. He was downsized again. And yet again after that. In the end you want Meyer to get permanent employment as much as he does. Emotions rage: anger, envy, fear, shame, self- pity, and above all, resentment. The mordant text picks at a wound slow to heal, and for those who never labored in a corporate gulag, it may seem to moan too much. But for the increasing numbers who have had to deal with ``human resource'' drones, outplacement geeks, and inane job interviews, this narrative of the precipitous decline and fall of a once self-assured pro will resonate. Meyer notes that ``something is shutting down permanently in America, coming to an end.'' Certainly the bond of loyalty between employer and employee is ended, as this book graphically demonstrates. A moral for employers: think again about firing an employee who has the talent to write about it and a penchant for sharp character sketches. Here's a funny, frank, and underlying it all, melancholy journal of a painful journey. (First serial to Harper's)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-879957-22-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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