An innovative view of personal empowerment seen through the lens of a technology pioneer’s life.
A motivational business book focuses on the career of computer industry icon Steve Jobs.
“What does it take to make it to the top?” Toguchi (co-author: Land Warfare in the Information Age, 2004) asks in this work, centering his narrative on “one remarkable individual who relied upon his skills, habits, and behaviors to achieve success.” Of that list, the item to which the author devotes the bulk of his attention is habits, which he views as the keystone of both life and success. “Habits prepare entrepreneurs for the storm,” he writes, mapping his study of the intricacies of habits onto the biography of Jobs and his lifetime of innovation. Toguchi takes readers through the well-known stages of Jobs’ career at Apple, outside of Apple, and then back at Apple, and he touches on the setbacks the visionary encountered, including the cancer that eventually claimed his life. Toguchi deftly draws on these biographical details in order to draw morals that are unfailingly upbeat: “You can overcome the difficulties of life with the right attitude and perseverance,” he writes, pointing out that Jobs had a remarkable ability to identify significant features and see a clear path to achieving his design concepts—whether or not that road aligned with the advice of the professionals around him. “In solving his problems, Steve Jobs did not rely on marketing surveys to steer his choices for consumers,” Toguchi writes. Instead, the entrepreneur trusted in his “own intuition and gut instincts.” Readers will find the author a lively, engaging counselor, although the more familiar they are with the history and nature of Jobs, the less they might believe some of Toguchi’s assessments, including that the magnate epitomized the kind of individual who “exuded a positive attitude” and that he “developed the habit of making a great first impression.” Jobs’ many enemies would laugh at such comments, but even skeptics should appreciate the optimistic spirit of the author’s conclusions.
An innovative view of personal empowerment seen through the lens of a technology pioneer’s life.Pub Date: May 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-2205-0
Page Count: 166
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
