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AS GOOD AS GOLD

Name: AS GOOD AS GOLD
Author: Robert W. Killick
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0705-5

by Robert W. Killick ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2017

A cheerful, if unevenly written, remembrance about marriage, business, and chemistry.

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An organic chemist and businessman details his unusual journey in this debut memoir.

After losing his job in 1983, Australian chemist Killick, a father of three, came to an unexpected decision with his wife, Judy, a part-time teacher. They resolved to buy a 50-year-old chemical plant in Melbourne and go into business for themselves. Although the plant had “one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin,” writes Killick in his introduction, “the book records how we reached the point where the grave was filled in whilst the banana proved to be a good fertilizer.” They later found success through the production of “Ee-muls-oyle”—an oil used in the raisin-drying process—and the acquisition of a number of patents. The author and his wife then traveled the world selling their products; eventually, they sold the initial plant and upgraded to a much better facility. As Killick recounts the ups and downs of growing the business over the course of several decades, he makes side trips to inform readers of his early life, his Christian faith, and his deep love of and fruitful marriage to Judy (they refer to their partnership as “the Punch and Judy Travelling show”). He also showcases his goofy sense of humor, which he didn’t hide from his potential business partners. Killick writes in a lighthearted, enthusiastic prose that frequently betrays his own surprise at his own good fortune: “I have a habit of turning to Judy and saying, ‘Drying grapes has got us into some unexpected, quaint places!’ ” The sections of the book dedicated to the building of the chemical company—replete with incidents of improvisation, luck, and near-disaster—will interest anyone who has run, or hopes to run, their own business. The biographical sections, however, are a bit less compelling, and their nonchronological distribution throughout the book makes for an uneven reading experience. That said, readers who have experience with family businesses will find much in common with the author, who’s an entertaining guide through his own story.

A cheerful, if unevenly written, remembrance about marriage, business, and chemistry.

Pub Date: April 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0705-5

Page Count: 334

Publisher: BalboaPressAU

Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)