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THIS IS IT

IF YOU’RE WAITING FOR A SIGN TO START YOUR BUSINESS

A thorough work that provides useful perspectives on entrepreneurship.

Awards & Accolades

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A father and son share their path to business ownership.

In this book, Glenn Edwards and his son Jordan provide a much-needed detour from the usual road-weary guides to self-employment. Combining elements of a memoir, a corporate biography, and business how-to, their work traces the Edwards family’s successful businesses from their inception: Chart Organization, a commercial real estate firm; and Mixology Clothing Company, which sells women’s attire. Mixology, founded a decade ago in New York City, has surpassed $10 million in annual sales, they note, but they make clear that they didn’t ride a bullet train to success; by their own admission, their stories also include half-million-dollar losses. Glenn Edwards (Coming into Your Own, 2017) and his debut co-author include lots of advice (“Learn from your mistakes. And, if you are smart, learn from other people’s mistakes, too”), and also provide lengthy, instructive interviews in Q&A format with colleagues (such as Mixology controller Eugene Parisi), business leaders, and even sports champions (such as mixed martial arts competitor Sensei Nardu Debra). Comprehensive lists of recommended reading make this a handy resource, as do the final appendices, which gather up the specific advice in each chapter as bullet points. At times, the book feels like one is eavesdropping on a business roundtable. Along the way, the authors quote an offbeat collection of figures; for instance, a quote from Socrates appears in the same chapter as one by real estate mogul and Shark Tank panelist Barbara Corcoran, who embraces the melding of best practices and attitude—voicing a theme that the authors agree with, but that doesn’t normally run through a business book: “The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend feeling sorry for themselves.”

A thorough work that provides useful perspectives on entrepreneurship.

Pub Date: June 7, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1292-1

Page Count: 174

Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019

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I AM OZZY

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

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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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