A personal and readable account of a mortgage-company founder who made it big.
Investment banker Whalen offers the life story and professional wisdom of a successful New Jersey businessman in this biography.
Whalen describes Stanley Middleman, founder of the national mortgage banking company Freedom Mortgage, as “one of the largest and fastest-growing independent mortgage companies in the country.” In this biography, the author follows his subject from the earliest days of his working life, frantically working multiple jobs while putting himself through school. He got his first real break—and his first deep insight into the business principles that would later guide his career—when he was working in Philadelphia, selling patriotic souvenirs to tourists during the 1976 Bicentennial. While he was still a young man, he began a career in finance, selling annuities amid the “sky-high interest rates” of the mid-1980s. In the ’90s, he founded his signature company, Freedom Mortgage, in a real estate market that was still reeling from the inflation-fighting interest rates of the ’70s—indeed, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is often portrayed as a kind of villain in these pages. Along the way, Middleman conceived a handful of familiar professional precepts, including “Every Idea Starts with You,” and “Then Things Change.” He used these principles in order to, as he put it, “see around corners,” which he describes as the ability to “predict or gain insights on the future based on our past experiences.” Some readers may think, however, that this titular notion seems to conflict with the unpredictability of “Then Things Change”—and also with how nimble Middleman was in the face of unexpected developments over the course of his own career. As such, readers may find the self-help aspects of this work to be somewhat uneven. Even so, Whalen’s biography is an engaging case study of the benefits of hard work and discipline. However, readers may reasonably wonder if a first-person remembrance by Middleman himself might not have been more entertaining and insightful.
A personal and readable account of a mortgage-company founder who made it big.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798887504087
Page Count: 280
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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