A valuable work on a relevant, appealing leadership style.
A manual for leadership focused on community values.
In his debut, Davis presents a philosophy and a plan for a style of leadership he calls “sacred,” which involves undertaking “missions that recognize and value what is sacred to humankind and that serve the greatest good.” For Davis, the sacred is not connected to religion but to ideas that are “so powerful and deeply rooted in service to the larger community that their rightness is indisputable.” As an educator with decades of experience in volatile schools and communities, he developed a leadership style based on engagement with communities, not on solving individual problems as they arise. Davis devotes an entire chapter to his career as a teacher and principal in an inner-city Los Angeles high school, and his biography follows the evolution of his leadership style, including a number of real-world examples. For example, Davis and his wife later constructed a public installation in Detroit that invited community members to record their dreams; the project resulted in a community-garden initiative. In this way, the Davises followed what the community deemed necessary. Davis’s “sacred leadership” takes into account the values and dreams that already exist in a community; as such, it’s uniquely suited to leaders working with a population of a different background than their own. Davis encourages leaders to respond to the situation and the people as they exist, not as they might like them to exist. The techniques and principles will likely be useful not only for educators but also for administrators in nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Each chapter opens with an inspirational quotation and closes with a list of questions for reflection, engaging the reader in a deeper way than a simple narrative or list of instructions might do. Overall, this work is well written and straightforward, and it serves as an ideal introduction to Davis’s ideas.
A valuable work on a relevant, appealing leadership style.Pub Date: June 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985504106
Page Count: 184
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.
From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.
Drawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne (Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation—or surprising durability—of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world.
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-53-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With this detailed, versatile cookbook, readers can finally make Momofuku Milk Bar’s inventive, decadent desserts at home, or see what they’ve been missing.
In this successor to the Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar’s pastry chef hands over the keys to the restaurant group’s snack-food–based treats, which have had people lining up outside the door of the Manhattan bakery since it opened. The James Beard Award–nominated Tosi spares no detail, providing origin stories for her popular cookies, pies and ice-cream flavors. The recipes are meticulously outlined, with added tips on how to experiment with their format. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author. Still, it’s a bit more sophisticated than the typical Betty Crocker fare. In addition to a healthy stock of pretzels, cornflakes and, of course, milk powder, some recipes require readers to have feuilletine and citric acid handy, to perfect the art of quenelling. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. A refreshing, youthful cookbook that will have readers happily indulging in a rising pastry-chef star’s widely appealing treats.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-72049-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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