An engaging, wide-ranging study of how leaders lead.
McCoog explores various concepts of leadership in this nonfiction debut.
The author, a professor working in academic medicine, leans heavily on a narrative approach: “Stories are how we understand our world,” he writes. “Formulating and telling a story is something just about anyone can do.” Starting with the example of Lucy, the chimpanzee who was taught sign language at the University of Oklahoma, and progressing from the Leadership Continuum developed in the 1950s by Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt to more recent examples like The Leadership Challenge, first published in 1987 by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (which asked, “What do leaders do when they are at their personal best?”), McCoog looks at a wide variety of leadership theories and models that have been proposed over roughly the last century. He’s clearly read a vast amount of material on the subject, including contemporary books like David Rock’s Quiet Leadership(2006), which posits that an effective leader “allows the team space to brainstorm and hypothesize solutions.” McCoog imparts a warmly human tone to his research by weaving in many moments from his own life, which are often so well told that they almost distract from the more clinical leadership discussions; in one memorable anecdote, random circumstances combined to make the author’s beloved mentor the only person waiting to congratulate him upon successfully defending his doctoral dissertation. “The man who believed in me and started my journey into the field of education,” he recalls, “was with me at the end of one path and the amazing beginning of another.” Readers looking for a comprehensive survey of various schools of thought about leadership styles will find plenty to interest them here, and they’ll be delighted by the personality with which it is delivered.
An engaging, wide-ranging study of how leaders lead.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781578691845
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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