Years of business wisdom distilled into an entertaining and useful narrative.
The book version of the popular NPR podcast.
As Raz explains it, his titular radio show, which features in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs from across the business landscape, is less a how-to-succeed-in-business program than a storytelling hour. Lectures have their place, but a good story will keep listeners tuned in. Featuring his probing yet welcoming narrative voice, Raz presents stories that serve as solid lessons in entrepreneurship. While the syntheses of the lessons are useful, it is the learning curve—the story-by-story building of business acumen—that imparts the most wisdom. The comments from the entrepreneurs are consistently candid and practical. For example, begin with a concrete, unique idea that lies “at the intersection of personal passion and problem solving.” From dozens of on-the-ground stories, Raz gathers countless business pearls: Don’t quit your day job; do your homework; find a co-founder since humans thrive when we work together; prioritize the funding of the business, whether through bootstrapping or other people’s money, such as a relative’s or venture capitalist’s. The narrative then moves on to business-building—all the tests that you will have to confront and overcome with a new business—and Raz introduces new characters and continues to follow entrepreneurs we have met in the earlier chapters, thus enabling readers to grasp the path to their success. In the concluding part of the book, the author tackles what he feels most profoundly about: passion and decency. Kindness, generosity, and respect are critical to a long-lasting business (plus a shared purpose and values); without passion—“it’s about finding and fulfilling a deeper purpose”—look forward to a lifetime of disgruntlement. Among the businesses included in the book: Dell Computer Corporation, Boston Beer Company, FUBU, Method cleaning products, Chicken Salad Chick, Allbirds, Stacy’s Pita Chips, and Carol’s Daughters.
Years of business wisdom distilled into an entertaining and useful narrative.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-21676-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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