A lively and illuminating revisionist history.
A search for profits and new markets spurred England’s exploration of North America.
Business journalists and historians Butman (Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas, 2013, etc.) and Targett argue persuasively that the myth of America’s founding narrative, centered on the Pilgrims’ quest for religious freedom, ignores the reality of England’s relationship to the New World in the 16th century. For the English, settlements offered both a market for manufactured goods—especially woolen cloth, on which the economy was largely based—and a source of coveted raw materials, notably fur, wood, and precious metals. America’s origin was not “a fable of moral rectitude and national goodness” but rather the culmination of decades of business deals. Jobs, the authors reveal, were the Pilgrims’ “key concern.” Drawing on considerable primary sources, the authors chronicle the investment groups—beginning with the Company of Merchant Adventurers, in 1552—who gathered shareholders to fund expeditions to foster trade. The Merchant Adventurers at first focused on trade with Russia and finding a northern route to China. That focus shifted after explorers Martin Frobisher and Francis Drake returned to England in the late 1570s with reports of vast western lands and a possible route to China through the Northwest Passage. In a nation mired in debt and economic problems, the lure of land grants appealed to investors large and small: merchants, artisans, shopkeepers, and soldiers. Nevertheless, with most investors contributing from 5 to 50 pounds, it proved difficult to fund a fleet of several ships and hundreds of men. Storms, disease, navigation errors, and rivalries undermined many voyages. Still, reports of successes “gave England a new way to think about itself—no longer as a sluggish and neglectful nation but as a bold seafaring people.” The authors give ample evidence that “the driving commercial impulse, the spirit of enterprise” underlay the creation of America. As John Smith wrote in 1616, no “other motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonweale.”
A lively and illuminating revisionist history.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-30788-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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