Optimism about America from a man mulling his next expression of civic responsibility.
The former CEO of Starbucks wants to give everyone a chance to be their best selves.
Schultz (Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, 2011, etc.) reflects on his personal and professional journey “to try to answer a vital question of our time: What can we do to effect meaningful change and create the just, fair, and secure future we all desire?” He recounts successes, challenges, and failures as he pursued his goal of creating a profitable business that balances “seemingly competing priorities of humanity and prosperity.” Schultz envisioned Starbucks as more than a coffee shop: a place of respite and community where people would feel welcomed, a “third place,” he calls it, not home or work but rather an escape from both. “Haunted by the anxiety” of his family’s financial insecurity, Schultz wanted to give his employees respect, fair pay, and benefits such as health insurance, stock options, and, eventually, tuition reimbursement. Starbucks, he hoped, would become known “as a great place to work” as well as a place “that fostered human connection over great coffee.” The author comes across as a sensitive—although sometimes naïve and wide-eyed—observer of injustice and a “common-sense” problem-solver open to innovative ideas. In 2014, after the deaths of Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin, for example, he began to ask himself “what the tragic deaths, court rulings, and uprisings revealed about the plight of black people in America today.” As a white, wealthy male, he wondered, “Where had I been?” His response was to mount an initiative called Race Together—a message featured on Starbuck cups and discussed in open forums—which, he was surprised to discover, generated “biting headlines” and satirical jokes. Nevertheless, he believes his decision to focus on race embodied the company’s values “of trying to uphold human dignity by fostering civil conversation about complex topics.” More successful initiatives include college mentoring, job creation for veterans and refugees, and philanthropic giving from the author’s family foundation.
Optimism about America from a man mulling his next expression of civic responsibility.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50944-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
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.
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
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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