Shows that time’s winged chariot can glisten brightly, even in the sunset.
A prolific author now in his late-60s examines why some artists remain productive, even innovative, in the dying of the light, while others opt not to rage but to rusticate.
Though Delbanco (The Count of Concord, 2008, etc.) confines himself to the visual arts, music and literature, he realizes the enormity, even impossibility, of doing justice to everyone who deserves attention. After some introductory ruminations on aging in America (it’s not popular) and on the premature deaths of some notables, he begins his journey through his tangled subject with a discussion of his father, who practiced his cello into his 90s. Delbanco then moves to Herman Melville’s late-life marvel (Billy Budd, unpublished in his lifetime) and a lengthy discussion of Shakespeare, who died in his 50s, an advanced age for the 17th century. The author follows with some brief biographical sketches of artists who labored long and well, among them Tolstoy, Hardy, Alice Neel and George Sand. Searching still for answers, he gives more lengthy treatments to nine more figures, including Casals, Monet, Yeats, Liszt and Lampedusa, whose late-life The Leopard (1958) was a phenomenon. Realizing the importance of good fortune, health and genetics, Delbanco also looks at brain science, and specifically at Picasso, who worked into his 90s—perhaps an exemplar, writes the author, of the notion that “competitive wrangling and brilliant innovation and sexual careerism may coexist.” Delbanco provides an old-fashioned disquisition, not a self-help book, so he offers no bullet list of the Ten Things We Can All Do to Remain Productive Geniuses. However, he does extract from his wide reading and capacious imagination a few principles, among them the “desire to capture what disappears, to fix in melody or line or language what otherwise is mutable.” In that vein, he reprints some eloquent comments on the subject supplied by John Updike, not long before he died in 2009 at age 76.
Shows that time’s winged chariot can glisten brightly, even in the sunset.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-19964-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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