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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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