Revelations about the 20th century's most mysterious novelist. Despite the fascination gleaming from the story of B. Traven, best known as the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Guthke's bio is a hard book to warm up to for the first half. This is because Guthke (German Art and Culture/Harvard) has so much preliminary material to discuss and dismiss, mainly about the false leads on Traven's identity that received large circulation. On his deathbed, however, Traven did tell his wife of 12 years who he was (pretty much). By then his works had sold 30 million copies in 36 languages and, since he was dying (at 85 or so), he no longer needed to protect the privacy that allowed him to walk down the streets of his beloved Mexico City without being annoyed by strangers. Guthke is the first writer on Traven to be allowed complete access to Traven's archives. From the 1920's to the 1960's, Traven spoke of himself as an American of Scandinavian extraction—but he was really a former Bavarian anarchist and stage actor (a bit player) named Ret Marut. Even so, his will states that he was Traven Torsvan Croves, born in Chicago in 1890 and naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1951. Apparently even Ret Marut was a stage name, but as Ret Marut the author seemingly did a deed he wanted forever buried. His time as a below-deck sailor ended when he holed up in a bungalow in the Mexican bush, worked as a laborer, and wrote his first spate of novels under horrendous conditions. He became a big seller in Germany before the Nazis forbade his books, after which he translated himself into English. Meanwhile, obsessive shyness hid a certain grandiosity, and he at times spoke of his alter ego as ``the greatest contemporary philosopher,'' although his last three decades produced no major works. As quirky with odd passageways and dead ends as was Traven himself. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1991
ISBN: 1-55652-132-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for...
A satisfactory business study confirming the old business saw that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
According to Annunzio's analysis, only 10% of elite information workers work in high performance-workgroups. The remaining 90%? Apparently they labor away as modern-day Bob Cratchits, in environments that neither demand nor deliver optimal performance. Ebullient accounts of the ideal workplace are nothing new in business nonfiction, nor are the lugubrious tales of moribund organizations. The author rarely notes here, though, anything we haven't heard a million times before from Tom Peters, Steven Covey, or even Donald Trump. Her maxims are boilerplate business clichés: value people; optimize critical thinking; seize opportunities. But basing a formula for business success on such bland principles is problematic, since they are so vague as to be meaningless. Do companies fail because they neglect to do such things? Most failures had nothing to do with workgroup functioning; instead, they stemmed from lack of foresight and, more commonly, simple bad luck. Nonetheless, Annunzio does proffer good advice for companies that wish to maximize the performance of their workgroups. First, identify those that are performing at a high level, those that can provide evidence of profit/revenue growth along with product, service, or process innovation. Second, work on bringing average groups up to maximum performance. More importantly, avoid destructive behaviors such as micromanagement, bureaucratic interference, resource and information hoarding, politics, and control. She also makes the astute—and cost-saving—observation that before hiring high-priced consultants to solve business problems, companies might consider consulting their own employees, who are more likely to know the answers.
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for business success.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2004
ISBN: 0-59184-060-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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