A balanced, if redundant, account of the life and times of rock promoter Bill Graham, by English-born investigative journalist Glatt. Born in 1933 in Germany, Graham escaped the Holocaust, coming at age ten to the US, where he was adopted by a Jewish-German family but suffered psychological problems adjusting to American life. Progressing from running crap games at a Catskills hotel, he settled in San Francisco, where he managed a trucking company while yearning for a life in the arts. Taking a big pay cut, Graham became the manager of the San Francisco Mime Troupe; soon after, he began promoting rock concerts, using an old theater in a bad part of town as his venue. Graham built his empire on the Fillmore, eventually opening an N.Y.C. branch while moving into band- management, record production, and the lucrative business of rock souvenirs. He eventually closed both theaters but remained a force in the rock world, organizing charity events like Live Aid and the first Amnesty International tour. Although Graham was professionally successful, his personal life was often a shambles: He treated women poorly and was often strung out on cocaine, Ecstasy, and sleeping pills. Glatt relies mostly on others' written accounts and magazine interviews in compiling this bio (he even uses Graham's own Bill Graham Presents, 1992, which covers much of the same ground), but he did talk to a few Graham associates, particularly one of the promoter's ex-girlfriends, Regina Cartwright, who sheds some new light on Graham's fiery temperament. Glatt's British roots lead him to odd mistakes (he describes Kesey's Magic Bus as ``a brightly painted van''), and he's weak when discussing 60's social trends. In any case, Graham's life was so downbeat (he died in 1991 in a helicopter crash following a decade of new personal declines) that one wonders why we need another bio to supplement his own: for rock completists only. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55972-207-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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