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
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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