Unflinching annals of commodity-driven colonialism.
A penchant for imperial nostalgia serves the author of The Great Hedge of India (2001) well in exploring centuries of the British lust for tea and a far-flung empire of exotic acreage on which to grow it.
In 1961, at the twilight of that empire, 21-year-old Moxham took a job helping to manage a tea plantation in Nyasaland (now Malawi) in southeast Africa. His memories of that experience provide an engaging wraparound to the story of how an ancient Chinese beverage besotted a nation poised to rule the world in the mid-17th century. Moxham assigns the role of Pandora to Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, who arrived for her wedding to restored Stuart king Charles II accompanied by a largish chest of tea. The courtly fashion of sipping the leafy brew became an expensive upper-class habit that, as taxes were relaxed, filtered down to the man in the street. Its original retailers, apothecary shops, hawked tea as a medicinal stimulant, but the coffeehouses of Boswell and Johnson knew a runaway fad when they saw one. Because smuggled tea may have accounted for half or more of the total consumed by the British for most of the 18th century, the author points to the sharp rise in sugar imports during that period as a relevant tracking statistic. (But he misses the opportunity to note that some historians view the resulting fixation of George III on his “sugar islands” as the reason that second-rate admirals and generals were posted to quell the American Revolution while the varsity patrolled the Caribbean.) The rapid oxidation of freshly picked tea leaves required factories close to the fields and lots of slaves or dirt-cheap labor. The varied and nefarious ways British planters met those requirements all over the tropical world, right down to Moxham’s hard-drinking cronies in Malawi, are fascinating.
Unflinching annals of commodity-driven colonialism.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7867-1227-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
HISTORY | BUSINESS | WORLD | GENERAL BUSINESS
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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