A fine book for a newly hired college graduate who wants to succeed.
A thorough compendium of straightforward, sensible advice for newbies finding their way around their first office jobs.
Deitz graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 1975 and rose to some of the highest levels in law and government, including service as general counsel of the National Security Agency. So when this heavy hitter tells you to beware of casual dress on the job, you do it. It’s difficult to argue with any of the 80 or so items of workaday advice Deitz offers in this slim, well-written guidebook, which covers the essentials of successful on-the-job behavior, dress, etiquette and online activities. While Kim Beamon’s If Cubicles Could Talk (2001) focused on helping young women, Deitz’s advice is for everyone in the workplace, but unlike Steven Lyons’ similar Congratulations, Great Job! (2007), this book gets right to the point and stays tightly on message. It ranges from the obvious (“Don’t whine”) to the sublime (“Study your boss carefully”); from the questionable (“Do not exercise your rights”) to the wise (“Be a team player, but take ownership of your assignments”); and from the bureaucratic (“Beware of the press”) to the savvy (“Quick drafts: Hah!”). It’s the rare college graduate, new to an office job, who won’t benefit from Deitz’s writing counsel (“However the assignment is phrased, you are being asked to prepare a complete document, with proper headings…proper format, and fully developed arguments all wrapped in stylish prose that is spell-checked and grammatically unassailable.”), and Deitz follows it up by warning readers never to rely exclusively on spell-checkers. However, there remains room for improvement; most of the author’s advice is couched in terms of what not to do, giving the book a tone of all-encompassing commandment. Readers presumably “just got hired,” so there’s little reason for this book’s two pages of resume rules—but they’re there if readers want them. The author also repeats a couple of points, which might have been avoided by stronger editorial review. But these flaws are small compared to the value of the lessons the author shares so openly, based on his extensive, high-level office experience.
A fine book for a newly hired college graduate who wants to succeed.Pub Date: March 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481944298
Page Count: 42
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
