Inspirational tidbits on work and life from productive and happy people from diverse backgrounds.
Advice for one of life’s most important transitions: stepping out into the “real” world after four years of college.
Of course, it is not an easy task for anyone, and leaving that insulated world with no clue of the future can be daunting. "Not getting a job right out of college felt like the lowest point in my life, but what it really did was force me to learn so much about myself,” writes Schwarzenegger (Rock What You've Got: Secrets to Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who's Been There and Back, 2010). Here, she chronicles her interviews with men and women who successfully navigated the often unnerving moments of post-college life. From Anderson Cooper to DJ Armin van Buuren to the founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes, Candace Nelson, each interviewee expresses his or her aha moment, when they found their passion and followed it to the fullest, despite setbacks and bad odds, and launched into a career they truly enjoy. Some chose not to attend school but jumped into the fray and used life as their education; others worked in crummy jobs to pay the bills while consistently chugging forward on their personal goals; some wound up in places and jobs they'd never dreamed of simply due to the fact that they were open to all possibilities. As fashion model and designer Lauren Bush Lauren writes, "a college degree isn't what makes you smart; it's curiosity and the desire to seek answers and practical knowledge to help guide you in your field of choice." Each narrative shows the emotional doubts, anxieties and joys felt while starting a company, becoming a philanthropist or climbing the corporate ladder. Although geared toward young college graduates, the advice is relevant to anyone who's been laid off from work or is in search of a new direction in life. Other contributors include Eva Longoria, Bear Grylls and Jillian Michaels.
Inspirational tidbits on work and life from productive and happy people from diverse backgrounds.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-34720-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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