by Shane Neman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2023
A vigorous look at a bygone NYC club era—and the business lessons that can be learned from it.
Neman presents a combination of New York nightlife memoir and business playbook.
In his nonfiction debut, the author blends his recollections of experiencing the New York nightlife scene of the 1990s with the event marketing lessons he learned while living and working in that “unlikely ecosystem.” Neman went on to found the event marketing company JoonBug, and although these pages chart the founding and rise of that company, they also provide tantalizing glimpses of the wild world of 1990s club life, including some of the most exclusive establishments of the time, places like Bungalow 8, Socialista, PM, and Lot 61, which became famous for their spectacular events and the bizarre “Club Kids” who drifted from one hot spot to the next (“There was nowhere else you could find this kind of diversity, chaos, and creativity. It was as though society itself had been amplified and turned in a kaleidoscope”). Neman and his partner, Ariana, experienced this world firsthand (“both of us had lived and breathed nightlife for years”) and began to start seeing its limitations—such as its exclusivity, a business model that “isn’t built with long-term gains in mind but instead is driven by ego.” As JoonBug began to garner clients and industry recognition, Neman learned how the circuit worked and began coming up with innovative ways to update it. He’s a lively, energetic storyteller with a winning rags-to-riches success story to tell, and many of the anecdotes he relates are irresistible. The insights Neman conveys will be eye-opening to readers aspiring to the event promotion lifestyle, as when he points out that the real money-move for events is to rent a cheap venue and fill it with high-paying patrons: “Exclusivity doesn’t pay the bills,” he writes, “but by catering” to “the masses, we were able to hit paydirt.”
A vigorous look at a bygone NYC club era—and the business lessons that can be learned from it.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1637556818
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
Awards & Accolades
Likes
70
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
70
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Walter Isaacson
BOOK REVIEW
by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Daniel Kahneman
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.