A nicely balanced personal and practical book of corporate reflections and hard-won business lessons.
A successful entrepreneur tells his story and provides guidance for others seeking a similar path.
Smulyan, founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications Corporation, offers a pleasing amalgam of business guide and memoir. The author begins by chronicling his humble beginnings in a Midwest Jewish family in which entrepreneurial roots ran deep. Though he developed an early passion for radio, his father steered him toward a law degree for the “instant credibility a master’s degree won’t give you.” After operating WNTS, a small Indianapolis radio station (“These days, WNTS is known for its original midday host, David Letterman”), Smulyan branched out to own stations in other markets, experimented with diversified formats like religious and all-sports broadcasting, and eventually founded Emmis Communications, a company that expanded to include TV stations and magazines. In 1989, Smulyan led a group of investors in the acquisition of the Seattle Mariners, a problematic proposition that the author recounts candidly. Sprinkled throughout the shrewd text are accounts of impressive ratings for Emmis’ top radio stations and anecdotes about the personal and professional sacrifices that became necessary to keep Emmis profitable amid dot-com crashes and recessions. Smulyan fair-mindedly contrasts his major successes against his failures and near misses, some of which nearly cost him everything. He takes readers on a largely entertaining behind-the-scenes tour of the tumultuous nature of a struggling business and illuminates the uniquely challenging economics involved in the media and sports worlds. Smulyan, now 74 and still working, clearly believes in the classic principles of hard work and lifelong learning as well as the understanding that “to succeed, you absolutely have to know how to handle failure.” He dispenses sage advice on the power of effective leadership, business ethics, and integrity, and the rewarding benefits of fostering a collaborative corporate culture.
A nicely balanced personal and practical book of corporate reflections and hard-won business lessons.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63774-222-8
Page Count: 330
Publisher: BenBella
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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