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Businessman First

Name: Businessman First
Author: Maurice W. Dorsey
ISBN: 978-1493114795

REMEMBERING HENRY G. PARKS, JR. 1916-1989 CAPTURING THE LIFE OF A BUSINESSMAN WHO

by Maurice W. Dorsey ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2014

Offers insight into the 20th-century–African-American experience and a lesson in optimism.

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A tribute to Henry G. Parks Jr., the man who created and built Parks Sausages (“More Park Sausages, Mom”) into a national brand, written by the man he befriended and mentored for 10 years.

Henry Parks, born in 1916, was raised in “the segregated North” in Dayton, Ohio. The prevalent bigotry and de facto separation of the races that marked most of his life form a running backdrop to the story of a man determined to succeed in business. Dorsey’s debut volume is the completion of a project begun by Parks himself and is the fulfillment of a promise Dorsey made when Parks selected him to write his biography. The author has waded through voluminous notes, newspaper articles, awards and reminiscences to present a portrait of a talented, innovative entrepreneur. In this aptly titled retrospective, the lion’s share of the narrative chronicles Parks’ wide-ranging business ventures and participation on the boards of many of America’s large corporations. It’s not until the final chapters that readers are given a glimpse into Parks’ personal life. Here, one can find hints of the complexities of a man who operated by a personal moral code yet formed a lifelong and profitable business partnership with a notorious Baltimore numbers runner; a man who assumed without question financial support for his family but spent little time with them and, in the end, would say that he loved his children but didn’t really know them; and a man who declared, “I am not a Negro businessman. I am a businessman who is Negro” but who was committed to raising the hopes and aspirations of young blacks. One can almost hear Parks instructing his young protégé to write a business biography. Unfortunately, the result contains many dry passages and occasionally tedious listings of accomplishments. Timelines jump back and forth as Dorsey attempts to organize the volume into conceptual rather than sequential chapters. Absolutely clear, however, is that the author has great love for a man who treated him as a son.

Offers insight into the 20th-century–African-American experience and a lesson in optimism.

Pub Date: March 5, 2014

ISBN: 978-1493114795

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)