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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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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