A good-humored snapshot of one aspect of the Eastman Kodak Company, sure to charm sports enthusiasts and ’80s nostalgia...
Debut author Albright, who spent more than 20 years in Kodak’s public relations department, chronicles the heyday of the Kodak Sports Promotion Program via press releases.
Soon after joining the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in the early 1970s, Albright became a writer for its Sports Promotion Program, recording the heights of the company’s athletic sponsorship in the following decade. He collects his press releases here to provide a picture of Old Mother Yellow Box’s once-massive commitment to sports promotion, highlighting its Olympic sponsorship, its various All-American teams in women’s and men’s sports, and numerous honors, including the lauded Eastman Award. The collection includes appearances from a plethora of noteworthy personalities in sports ranging from basketball to golf to NASCAR to sumo wrestling. They include Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry, race car driver Mario Andretti, and basketball legends-to-be Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. The articles feature black-and-white illustrations and, of course, photographs, including one of track-and-field superstar Mary Decker posing with the Kodak Disc. Kodak allowed Albright great leeway, so he injected each article, memo, and travel report with a wry, self-deprecating humor. He writes in a professional but playful style in the press releases as well as in the prologues and epilogues that bookend them. These additions offer context to the story of the growth of the company along with hints at its decline. Albright’s approach in this memoir is unique, but its focus isn’t entirely clear, as there’s not enough information here to illustrate the Sports Promotion Program’s place in the history of Kodak itself. However, readers will glean much about Kodak’s promotional practices, particularly in an in-depth profile of the company’s use of “ambush marketing” during the 1984 Olympics: the company flooded the event with advertisements, including hundreds of commercials, to balance the fact that they lost sponsorship of the event to Fuji Film for the first time that year.
A good-humored snapshot of one aspect of the Eastman Kodak Company, sure to charm sports enthusiasts and ’80s nostalgia buffs.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-5550-6
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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