An intriguing and informative account of one woman’s triumphant career path.
A debut biography focuses on a Missouri entrepreneur.
In this book, Pulley tells the life story of Patti Penny, founder of a staffing company that does hundreds of millions of dollars in business. The volume follows a traditional chronological format, opening with Penny’s birth in rural Missouri in the early days of World War II. Penny’s childhood was complicated by her often contentious relationship with her mother, which led to the girl’s spending long stretches of time living with her grandmother, who provided the foundation for her upbringing. After finishing high school, Penny decided to make her own way in the nearby city of Springfield, where she had an active but frugal social life while holding a variety of jobs. Penny married a man named Al after a few months of dating, and his instinct for frugality meshed well with her ambition and sense of independence. Although Penny worked part time after her two children were born—after being forced to leave one employer as soon as her pregnancy began to show—a job was both financially and personally important to her, and she found her niche in the personnel departments of manufacturers and hospitals. She returned to school to earn a bachelor’s degree as a nontraditional student, and, with Al’s encouragement, she used her hiring and management experience to launch her own staffing firm, which succeeded and grew within Missouri and beyond. The book balances the personal and professional threads of Penny’s life effectively, presenting a well-rounded portrait. Pulley has an eye for detail (Penny and Al wed on Dec. 31, 1960, so they could claim the marriage on that year’s taxes) and does a good job of drawing the story’s disparate elements together. While the text’s more analytical asides may seem forced (for instance, attributing Penny’s understanding of business to her mother’s often lavish spending), on the whole, the biography succeeds through its close narrative perspective that allows Penny to share the key moments of her life. Penny and her friends and family collaborated closely with the author on the work, a process he describes in the foreword.
An intriguing and informative account of one woman’s triumphant career path.Pub Date: April 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4808-8661-2
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
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
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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