An accessible, nuts-and-bolts primer on a widely used office suite.
Lamont offers a speedy run-through of Google’s office suite in this third edition of his software guide.
Google’s online office suite is increasingly popular, providing a free, cloud-based alternative to Microsoft 365. Although it’s best known for its applications for file storage (Drive) and word processing (Docs), there are other applications as well, including Sheets, a spreadsheet maker; Slides, a presentation application; the diagramming software Drawings; Forms, a survey maker; and web page maker Sites. “While Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are not as sophisticated as their Microsoft counterparts,” writes Lamont in his introduction, “they handle basic documents and spreadsheets very well.” Lamont breaks each application down for new and would-be users, demystifying the platform and helping readers discover all the functions they offer. In keeping with its “30 Minutes” premise, the book provides a simple rundown for users to quickly familiarize themselves with each program, explaining its purpose, how to navigate it, and how to get the most out of it, presenting step-by-step instructions and plenty of clarifying screenshots. Lamont also includes “Protips” to fix common mistakes, such as creating files under the wrong account when one has two accounts open in a browser at the same time. This edition includes descriptions of the programs’ newest, updated interfaces and adds Forms and Sites to the mix for the first time. The author’s prose is sparse but encouraging and has the tone of a friendly, patient IT expert, and he beneficially speaks his mind when he thinks a product isn’t quite up to snuff: “While Google Sheets is good, it comes up short in a few key areas, such as formatting and working with large sets of data.” Overall, these programs are fairly straightforward, and Lamont’s explanations of them are likewise uncomplicated, but this book will be helpful for anyone who may be intimidated by the interface. It will also benefit experienced users who feel deficient in some area, such as the collaboration feature.
An accessible, nuts-and-bolts primer on a widely used office suite.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64188-055-8
Page Count: 104
Publisher: i30 Media Corporation
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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