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UNHOLY GHOST

Name: UNHOLY GHOST
Author: Nell Casey
ISBN: 0-688-17031-5

WRITERS ON DEPRESSION

edited by Nell Casey ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2001

Administer in small doses at sensible intervals—or expect a serious side-effect: depression.

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An uneven collection of 22 essays and excerpts on the subject of depression by a wide assortment of writers.

Mental-health journalist Casey has assembled quite an array of luminaries—from the quasars (William Styron, Larry McMurtry, Ann Beattie) to the lesser-known, and (in some sad cases) feebler lights. Among them they manage to cast considerable light on this dark disease, revealing vast dimensions that far surpass the ability of a single word to encompass it. Many confess they have no real idea of the source of their disease. (David Karp concludes that it “arises out of an enormously complicated, constantly shifting, elusive concatenation of circumstance, temperament, and biochemistry.”) Some are grateful for anti-depressant drugs; others rail against them. Some rage against psychiatric hospitals and grave treatments (like electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT), but Martha Manning calls ECT “the tractor that pulled me out of the mud.” Not unexpectedly, the principal adornments are those supplied by Russell Banks (who writes with compassion and eloquence about his wife’s depression), Larry McMurtry (whose personal experiences chronicled here appeared in fictional form in his Duane Is Depressed), William Styron (who observes that the illness’ only virtue—if such a sanguine word be apt—is that it can be conquered), and Donald Hall (whose loving words for his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, are almost unbearably poignant). Casey has employed an interesting device of juxtaposition: Chase Twichell (wife of Russell Banks) writes about her lifelong loneliness; Styron’s wife writes about her coping with his illness; editor Casey herself writes about her sister’s depression—and then novelist Maud Casey ends her sister’s collection with the observation that, finally, it is practicality that holds her to the earth. There is at times a redundancy to the volume (more than one writer teaches us about serotonin), but there are quiet surprises, too—like Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s luminous essay about being black, and being depressed.

Administer in small doses at sensible intervals—or expect a serious side-effect: depression.

Pub Date: March 7, 2001

ISBN: 0-688-17031-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP

- BOOK REVIEW
THE JOURNALS OF SPALDING GRAY
by Spalding Gray edited by Nell Casey

- BOOK REVIEW
AN UNCERTAIN INHERITANCE
edited by Nell Casey

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

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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

Categories:

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.