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THINKING ABOUT QUALITY

PROGRESS, WISDOM, AND THE DEMING PHILOSOPHY

Irritatingly superficial and discursive evangelism from a pair of lay preachers touting the quality gospel of W. Edwards Deming as the salvation of a backsliding US. Deming (who died at 93 in December) was a consequential prophet largely without honor in his own country until Dobyns and Crawford-Mason featured him in a 1980 NBC-TV documentary on the emphasis on quality in Japanese business management (Deming was considered a national treasure in Japan). At any rate, the authors became apostles, eventually writing a book about the master's teachings (Quality or Else, not reviewed). In April, moreover, the PBS television network is slated to air a program on Deming, which will be narrated by Dobyns and produced by Crawford-Mason. Viewers and others seeking profounder detail on the Deming canon (which is rooted in statistical-sampling theory) won't find it in the reverential text at hand. After opening with a paean to the all- encompassing virtues of quality assurance, the authors offer a once-over-lightly interpretation of the deceptively simple Deming credo, which sets a demanding 14-point agenda for corporate executives and other managers sincerely committed to renewing and transforming, not simply changing, their organizations. Using past competitions for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award as a reference point, they go on to cite as object lessons the variant fates of two commercial enterprises that embraced Deming's precepts (constancy of purpose, continuous improvement, elimination of numerical quotes, etc.). These true believers close with a hit-or- miss survey of the socioeconomic benefits that can accrue from adoption of Deming's principles in business, education, government, health care, and even the media. Paradoxically, perhaps, if the authors had adhered to Deming's philosophy in their own work, it might well have been worth a look.

Pub Date: April 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-8129-2392-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Times/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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