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 Yorker staff 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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