by Jeff Robert Hunt with Geoffrey Leavenworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 12, 2018
An essential resource for those involved with and affected by crisis management.
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A guidebook for organizations in times of crisis.
Disasters can occur at any time in a large business, government, or nonprofit organization—everything from a fatal accident to a sex scandal that captures national attention. Such occurrences can have an immense impact on how the public views an institution, notes PR expert and debut author Hunt, and managers should not take them lightly. The question is not how to avoid a crisis, but what can be done when something unexpected arises. Hunt (with debut co-author Leavenworth) presents answers in this terse and highly readable guide. In modern times, he notes, companies must not only answer to traditional media but also to the instantaneous and unpredictable sway of social media: “Local stories can rapidly become global stories,” he points out. What is one to do in such an environment? The book offers a range of real-world examples on what has and hasn’t worked for organizations in the past. In 2010, for instance, when the Deepwater Horizon accident occurred, British Petroleum had a public relations nightmare on its hands. As bad as the situation was in the aftermath, the author points out that it was made worse by a CEO who complained, “I want my life back.” Hunt argues that, instead of projecting such a lack of empathy, BP could have followed a path like that pursued by the Tokyo Electric Power Company following the nuclear meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, less than a year later. Although TEPCO initially received criticism for its reaction to the disaster, the company was able to show that employees who’d stayed behind to tend to the plant were heroic in their efforts. In this way, Hunt notes, TEPCO was able to associate itself with heroes, instead of a whiny executive. The book is full of such examples, and it comes across as an indispensable primer for business managers and their equivalents in other organizations. Although the book is dotted with full-page quotations that are sometimes more obvious than helpful (such as “Create content so strong that people want to share it with their friends”), the advice is varied and succinct. Penn State University, Blue Bell Creameries, and Volkswagen are just a handful of the brands mentioned, and Hunt tells readers just enough information about their struggles to be useful. The advice is very clearly presented, as when the author asserts that a company must not go silent in the wake of a fiasco, as doing so is “almost always a losing strategy.” The book will also hold value for those outside of public relations. After all, the general public may never truly know whether a corporation in hot water is actually sensitive to what’s happened, or if it’s merely constructing a narrative to woo the public. But the information in this book effectively gives the average reader a look behind the curtain to show how organizations handle (and mishandle) times of big trouble.
An essential resource for those involved with and affected by crisis management.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Ordnance Hill Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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