A vapid, throwaway book certain to exasperate most women who work.
Donald Trump’s daughter weighs in on “rewriting the rules for success.”
In a book that was written “before the election,” Trump (The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, 2009) cites her father as an influence in her business ventures, which have included her position as executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization and co-founder of the Ivanka Trump Collection. The fact that the author was born into wealth and married into another highly affluent family doesn’t necessarily discredit her oft-repeated assertion that she is "deeply passionate" about "the education and empowerment of women and girls; leveling the playing field for female entrepreneurs and job creators; and advancing the potential of women in our economy.” Certainly her degree from the Wharton School helps her cause as well. However, there is very little in this book—essentially a culling of maxims from a host of other business books from more qualified authors—that rings true. It’s also difficult to take advice about “leveling the playing field” from a businesswoman who has blatantly traded on the power and prestige of the presidency. She states the demographic of her “Women Who Work initiative” is "mostly millennials, single and married women, with and without kids…all passionate about work.” However, the focus of her insipid version of a live-your-best-life mantra is unsurprisingly limited to well-educated women in the corporate world. As she repeatedly claims that she wants to change “the conversation around work and women" and that she’s “incredibly dedicated to creating solutions for modern women who are living full, multidimensional lives,” the author is oblivious to the real trials of those who are unlike her. This short, nearly useless book fails to offer or add new information to countless other examinations of work and "passion,” not to mention more honest and instructive memoirs written by actual entrepreneurs who had to begin their paths to success from the ground floor.
A vapid, throwaway book certain to exasperate most women who work.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1132-2
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2017
SEEN & HEARD
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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