Folksy, and too humble by half: Israel-Curley was a rare bird, and it paid off handsomely. (128 b&w photographs)
The history of Judy’s, the young women’s clothing chain, along with tried-and-true business advice, from the force behind the operation.
From its start as a storefront in East Los Angeles in 1948 to its current superstore status, encompassing 104 stores, Judy’s was the inspiration of Israel-Curley, who set the tone and guided the business for 42 years, until she sold it in 1989. It was nearly unheard of for a woman to be running an expanding business in the 1950s, but Israel-Curley was successful by dint of her intuitive business sense—she welcomed her employees into an extended family, treated them fairly, offered them advancement, had impeccable timing for big moves, and worked like a dog (juggling family and work throughout)—not to mention that she had a flair for innovation. She is the first to say that the eye of the customer dictates fashion, yet it was her fashion sense that resulted in shortening sweater sleeves, introducing a certain pink, and bringing jeans and Keds to the fore. In a style that thrums with the obvious energy she brought to her work, she explains her guiding principles: that the aim is to sell a great product at good value; that fear is incompatible with creativity and ambition (but that worrying keeps you attentive to details); that the product comes first, then the location; that it’s not location location location, but customer customer customer. (“Be attentive to your customer and never help another at the same time without the consent of the first.”) She is frank about her unhappiness with unions: she feels she treats her employees better than a union would, and is, admittedly, a control freak; then again, she was one of the first to hire African-American saleswomen. Her chapter on rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous can be disregarded entirely.
Folksy, and too humble by half: Israel-Curley was a rare bird, and it paid off handsomely. (128 b&w photographs)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2002
ISBN: 1-58567-307-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
A random walk through the entrepreneurial outskirts of postindustrial commerce and show biz with a tour guide whose spiel has a nasty edge to it. Drawing on stories he has reported as a CBS TV correspondent, Geist (Little League Confidential, 1992, etc.) offers a discontinuous series of short takes on offbeat enterprises that have yielded the venturesome Americans who launched or embraced them modest amounts of fame and fortune. Cases in point range from the leading breeder of racing pigs through the inventor of the car- crushing leviathans known as monster trucks and Florida's top vendor of recycled golf balls to the two struggling illustrators who created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Covered as well are the proprietors of nail-care salons, traffic-safety schools, and the seemingly endless parade of lurid talk shows on daytime television, plus the resourceful aerospace engineer who first thought of blasting bullet holes in wearing apparel as a lucrative fashion statement. In most instances, unfortunately, the author goes beyond poking gentle fun at his subjects and their antics; indeed, he invariably holds them up to gratuitously savage ridicule. Nor can Geist resist any opportunity to show what a clever fellow he is, even when a straightforward account of junk entertainment like ``American Gladiators'' could speak for itself. All too often the effect is akin to the tedious pall cast by a stand-up comic who, bedazzled by his own wit, can't bear to leave the stage. While the author closes with backhanded homage to Judge Roy Hofheinz (builder of Houston's pace-setting Astrodome), a start-to-finish audit of his other vignettes reveals that they reach no particularly startling conclusions about the latter-day US or any other substantive matter. Sporadically amusing but wholly dispensable.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13883-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A timely, comprehensive, and often interesting argument that the most pressing issue the Middle East faces is not land and borders but rather the supply and distribution of the region's water. A soil scientist with extensive consulting experience throughout the world, Hillel (Plant and Soil Science/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Out of the Earth, 1990) reveals how, in one of the world's most strategic and parched areas, ecological considerations, particularly concerning water supplies, may influence geopolitics as much as summit meetings, police forces, and arms build-ups. Hillel focuses on the region's four great rivers: the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan. He shows how a 1967 dispute between Israel and Syria over water rights was a contributing cause to the Six-Day War; how Iraq and Syria nearly came to blows with Turkey in 1990 over distribution of water from the Euphrates; and how there has been considerable tension between Jordan and Saudi Arabia over an aquifer (a water-bearing layer of permeable rock and a rare geological feature in the arid Middle East) from which both desert kingdoms draw. Hillel also suggests ways that nations can avoid disputes through intercountry and regional agreements, and he proposes various means of increasing water supplies and assuring effective use—e.g., desalination, cloud seeding, drip irrigation, and improved transmission (pipeline leakage wastes fully half the water intended for some Middle Eastern cities). This is an impressively interdisciplinary study that combines insights from geology, archaeology, etymology, biblical and other ancient Near East studies, modern history, soil science, agronomy, ecology, and contemporary political analysis. At times, Hillel floods the reader with highly technical data that will interest only hydrologists or other specialists. Generally, however, this is a clearly written, often colorful, accessible, and useful work of regional studies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508068-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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