Warmly nostalgic yet highly relevant as a primer on building a firm and becoming a smart leader.
A debut author offers a business book disguised as a memoir.
Growing up in a blue-collar Alabama town, Birch may never have imagined she would start and run her own personnel recruitment firm. But one clue to her self-made success was the lesson she learned early on from Daddy about building a piano bench: “He said when something had to be done, it had to be done, whether he knew how to do it or not.” In a story that embraces much of that down-home wisdom, the author charts her childhood, delivering her recollections of the knowledge imparted by family and friends, many of whom stand out as memorable, sometimes quirky characters. As Birch matures, the reader witnesses her independent spirit evolving. She faced the typical and not-so-typical challenges along the way, from enduring failed relationships to becoming a working mother to realizing she had attention deficit disorder. Once she started her company, Birch remembered and applied many of her youthful experiences: “Two things I’d developed as a child turned out to be keys to my success in this business. One was how much I loved to win.…The other was the fact that people would tell me anything.” That second point is illustrated by several amusing anecdotes about job candidates—and employers—who do in fact share some remarkably intimate details with the author. The second half of the charmingly introspective book concentrates largely on Birch’s business escapades, some of which have her interacting with well-known personalities like Eunice Kennedy Shriver. The author’s richly adorned tales about people, whether famous or ordinary, are a highlight of the work. The final chapter is told in the same engaging style as the rest of the volume, but it cleverly interlaces 16 insightful “facts” with the narrative, such as “Fact #8: Look at your weaknesses as well as your strengths and partner with someone who can fill in your blanks.” In these pages, Birch maintains a rosy optimism and a keen knack for comprehending how lessons from childhood can serve one throughout life.
Warmly nostalgic yet highly relevant as a primer on building a firm and becoming a smart leader.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63299-108-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: River Grove Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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