Siebert sums up her own story best: “I don't know if I’ve ever broken into the Old Boy Network, but I’ve survived without...
Memoir by the first woman to hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
Although it’s hard to believe from today’s perspective, the venerable Big Board never accommodated a woman on the floor until 1967. Siebert’s purchase of a seat, for $445,000, resulted in an outburst of financier chauvinism recorded here, with a good dose of humor. Siebert, however, is no one-day feminist wonder. Before she gained her seat, she’d become a shrewd and prescient analyst. After cycling through a succession of Wall Street firms and hitting glass ceilings, she started her own, very successful, brokerage house. Governor Hugh Carey of New York, recognizing her financial acumen and probably wanting to score some points with women voters, appointed her New York State’s Superintendent of Banking. This was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, a time of unprecedented inflation and unprecedented interest rates to keep pace with it. Siebert fought a losing battle to keep New York banks from being bought up cheap by gaudy Hong Kong bankers or insidious Saudis. She was more successful in addressing problems in New York’s savings and loans—taking care of problems that, in other states, would lead later to the systematic bankruptcy of the S&L system. She reports on her unsuccessful run, as a moderate Republican, for Daniel Moynihan’s senate seat (Moynihan is one of the few people to elicit unconditioned dislike from Siebert). Unlike James Cramer, whose memoirs of a trading life came out this spring, Siebert does not come across as a person whose very cardiac system is connected to the ups and downs of the Dow.
Siebert sums up her own story best: “I don't know if I’ve ever broken into the Old Boy Network, but I’ve survived without it, and a lot of people who didn’t accept me at first learned to respect me.”Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-1114-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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