Full of sturdy, old-school leadership wisdom, a pleasant view from the top of a century of business.
A captain of industry chronicles an extraordinary life in the beauty business.
Lauder (b. 1933) tells both his own story and that of his mother, Estée Lauder (1908-2004), founder of the eponymous cosmetics company. Born Josephine Esther Mentzer, she got experience in the business world as a child, helping out in her father’s hardware store and a department store called Plafker & Rosenthal. At the time, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein owned the cosmetics industry, but as Estée pioneered the ideas of individual consultations and free gifts (her husband, Joe, mixed the creams in the kitchen), her star began to climb. Leonard began working in the plant at age 13; to put himself to sleep, he would “mentally check off all the specialty stores we sold to.” In 1958, he “officially” joined the company, which “barely had a dozen employees, including my parents and me.” He set his course early on: "My dream was to make Estée Lauder the General Motors of the beauty business, with multiple brands, multiple product lines, and multinational distribution.” He also dreamed, literally, of tinted lip gloss, which didn't exist at the time, and put it into production immediately. A watershed moment occurred during college, when his film club became so successful he started a second club to compete against it. This experience emboldened him to create Clinique, Origins, and Prescriptives and later to acquire Aveda, MAC, and others. “Competing against myself,” writes Lauder, “is an idea that never grows old.” Against the changing backdrop of 20th-century retail, the author describes his battles with the “ruthless” Charles Revson of Revlon and the later "Lancôme Wars." The final chapters detail Lauder’s successes as an art collector and philanthropist. The author is such a consistently genial guide that he even makes the rigors of the Navy—he joined after being rejected from Harvard Business School—seem charming.
Full of sturdy, old-school leadership wisdom, a pleasant view from the top of a century of business.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299094-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2021
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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