Massive information-gathering and a dedicated belief in the potential profitability of green business practices distinguish this lively manual for the environmental reform of companies. Makower (Woodstock, 1989) is the editor of The Green Business Letter. The author's focus is not on ``what business has done to the environment'' but rather on ``what effect a degraded environment'' and public concern about it may have on ``business's ability to be profitable and competitive'' in the 1990's. His prediction: negative, unless—as in some of the many corporate case studies included here—companies are willing to move out in front of the regulatory curve and become environmentally ``proactive.'' Makower's prescription for proactivity is offered through a collection of euphonic directives: Companies, he says, should take into account ``economics,'' including the cost of new regulations, shareholder lawsuits, green taxes, and customer good or ill will. Businesses should also increase ``enforcement'' of environmental regulations, which should teach them not only ``not to break the laws but to do no harm.'' And they should invest in ``empowerment,'' or learning to draw on employees, community groups, environmental experts, customers, and suppliers to preserve the environment; in ``education,'' or learning how to create and promote a green image and/or to set up a team for damage-control when an environmental disaster happens; in ``efficiency,'' or finding ways in which pollution prevention, waste reduction, and energy efficiency can maximize profits; and in ``excellence,'' or combining ``Total Quality Management'' with the ``E Factor'' for accounting bliss. In conclusion, Makower tells company environmental officers—a rapidly growing occupational category— how to launch a program, step by step. Unabashedly pro-business, which leads to some anomalous moments—as when, without irony, Makower quotes an Amoco Oil executive as saying ``I killed two birds with one stone'' by running contamination tests after a refinery containment failure. On the other hand, the author knows American business and businesspeople thoroughly, making this an important management tool for a cleaner era.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8129-2057-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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