by Philip Delves Broughton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2008
A discerning tour through the vaunted Hogwarts of capitalism.
What it takes to become a Master of the Universe (aka, an MBA).
Broughton, sophisticated Paris bureau chief for the London Daily Telegraph, figured he needed a change. Learning accounting might be just the thing, he thought. So he entered Harvard Business School, class of 2006. There, the naïf in matters commercial joined a student body largely composed, it seemed to him, of McKinsey alumni, military veterans and earnest Mormons. He took the dodgy but requisite personality test and assiduously devoted himself to macroeconomics, entrepreneurship, operations management, regression analysis, spread sheets, growth projections and, of course, leadership. All around him, student industrialists, pretend hedge-fund chieftains, pubescent investment bankers, acolyte venture capitalists, pretend Gordon Gekos, Rupert Murdoch wannabes and eager beavers channeling robber barons—classmates the author treats seriously and with respect—acquired the slogans, buzz words, jargon and acronyms considered de rigueur accessories to the HBS Master of Business Administration. Broughton summarizes the history of the school, first of its kind when founded in 1908. He reviews the ubiquitous case studies and depicts the learned profs and puissant guest speakers who invariably promoted a passion for challenge and leadership. A naturally proficient writer, now facile in matters financial, the author asserts that he enjoyed his two-year stint. Yet he had the faintest suspicion that the “transformational experience” HBS sold was missing something in the way of humanity. Faculty and visiting autocrats of the boardroom preached that family always came first, but these pundits and plutocrats never followed their own advice. The astute Broughton (sole member of his class without a job at graduation) reveals much about a place that caters to smart students who seek a path to wealth beyond Trumpian dreams of avarice.
A discerning tour through the vaunted Hogwarts of capitalism.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-175-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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