For readers who want to get ahead in the most efficient way possible, this book offers a straightforward look at what really...
Flores, an expert in career advancement, offers up-and-comers an inside look at what it takes to get promoted in this strikingly honest look at how to build and sustain forward momentum in the workplace.
Flores writes to tell people the truth about what will and will not help them get ahead in their careers. He delineates several competing theories about how career advancement takes place and then shows why these are idealistic and not proven by the facts of what actually occurs. He then lays out what he calls the “Real World Model,” which is a combination of advancement through traditional means, like having superior qualifications, and usually unspoken means, like having a good rapport with the boss and getting fast-tracked for promotion. He explains that advancement doesn’t just happen to people who have the right education and the right degrees; instead, it happens to people who, in addition to those qualifications, have an “X” factor. These are the people who end up being personally mentored by a boss or supervisor and who are earmarked for promotion, even when a company goes through the charade of looking for other candidates. In many cases, the system Flores lays out shrewdly reflects the reality of office politics; bosses are looking for people they can get along with, people with similar interests who laugh at their jokes and have the necessary charisma and prestige to add value to the company beyond the performance of their daily duties. However, some may find Flores’ system too cynical for implementation in every situation. Detractors may points out that those looking to advance in their careers need to determine which of the models Flores discusses is true for their place of employment, and act accordingly. While Flores’ advice will be good in many situations, its applicability may not be universal. Still, much can be learned from this book.
For readers who want to get ahead in the most efficient way possible, this book offers a straightforward look at what really earns someone a promotion and gives detailed instructions for bringing that to pass in a person’s real life.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-1420807554
Page Count: 286
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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