Despite a few flaws, a tidy, compact self-assessment manual.
This guide seeks to spark reflection about the qualities of leadership.
In a book that is largely composed of well-curated quotations, leadership coach Morris (co-author: Eight Critical Leadership Skills Created Through Effective Diversity Partnerships, 2005) explores three primary areas: Truth, Courage, and Risk. Each one is allocated its own section, which consists of a brief introduction, numerous quotes, and “Thought Experiments,” some based on specific citations, which aim to involve readers in provocative exercises. For example, one Thought Experiment begins with the compelling question “Are you free to live your life’s purpose?” while another asks, “In what ways have you been the quiet voice of courage today?” Interspersed throughout the sections are occasional blank pages with questions about how select quotes inspire readers to action. Clearly, the intent of such a volume is to engage the audience in an interactive process of primarily reading and responding to inspirational material. Indeed, many of the quotes from such notable and varied figures as Jane Austen, Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs, Rosa Parks, and Eleanor Roosevelt are meaningful and moving; as such, they are legitimate fodder for deep analysis. The quotes are particularly effective because they are smartly organized into the three areas. The design of the book is daring; a die-cut cover suggests the flames from a match and the page layout is airy and contemporary with creative type usage. The work does an excellent job of dramatically highlighting the quotes. All are in a handwritten font, some larger than others, some called out in a vibrant orange color, and others in white against a black background. On the downside, the small size of the book (nearly a 7-inch square) and the thinly ruled pages for writing may make it inconvenient, if not difficult, to fully respond to the questions. In addition, there is only a scant amount of editorial text regarding the serious subjects of truth, courage, and risk. Still, the strength of the quotes and the thought-provoking exercises create an involving workbook that can easily cross over from business to personal leadership.
Despite a few flaws, a tidy, compact self-assessment manual.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-615-74610-4
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Integral Coaching, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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