An accessible motivational guide for those feeling stuck or discouraged in their professional lives.
Readers don’t have to be the smartest ones in the room to be successful; they just need to demonstrate a willingness to work hard, argues this self-help book.
C students, rejoice. Brilliant overachievers may get all the attention, but “average Joes and Josies” have a chance to triumph in business and their careers, contends Farrington (The Crystal Pendulum, 2016, etc.). “Yes, you may be average, but so what?” he writes. “It’s a matter of knowing your own capabilities and strengths and doing something about them.” A self-described average guy, Farrington knows from experience that it’s possible to live a good life even if you don’t become a CEO or millionaire. He managed to go from unexceptional student to a healthy career in the software business through ingenuity and grit. For readers to do the same, they must start with embracing that’s it acceptable to be average. A lack of exceptional skills might seem like a disadvantage, but even average folks can ask questions, use their imaginations, take on challenges, and focus on always moving forward, all relatively simple tasks that will help position them for success. All people have “God-given talents” that can help them get ahead, and it’s just a matter of identifying and deploying them. Throughout, the emphasis is on moving up the ranks of an organization and reaching professional goals. The advice tends toward the simplistic. There are no cute strategies or clever sayings here—just common-sense wisdom. At times, things are a bit too basic. In an always-connected era, does anyone need to be told that “Google is a great tool to use for research”? Nonetheless, Farrington’s point that being average needn’t hold people back is well-taken. The straightforward tips he offers may not be complex, but they cover basic truths that anyone, even an overachiever, would do well to remember: If you can show up on time, work hard, and stay positive, you’re already several steps ahead of many colleagues.
An accessible motivational guide for those feeling stuck or discouraged in their professional lives.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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