Biting wisdom of the corporate world conveyed through a series of clever moral tales and anthropomorphic illustrations.
Borrowing from the style and structure of Aesop’s Fables, Fortune magazine columnist and author Bing (Executricks: Or How to Retire While You're Still Working, 2008, etc.) focuses his keen observer’s eye on the egos, misjudgments and general mayhem that sink or float the players in American Big Business. Offering a wealth of advice on navigating the tricky waters of corporate politics and interpersonal relationships, these parables are equally relevant for life outside the office. Bing’s pithy, humorous guidance is dispensed through his alter ego, Bingsop. The short volume is loaded with scathingly funny, and recognizable, corporate archetypes: the CEO, the Media Mogul, the Benefits Manager, the Consultants, among others. The fun begins with the “Translator’s Note,” in which the author explains that he is writing from a time far in the future recounting the collected wisdom of a scribe from early-21st-century America. Brodner's illustrations of animals as human caricatures are clever and offbeat. Each tale ends with a moral that cuts to the chase—e.g., “Everybody wants to think outside the box unless it’s their box,” or “It’s your ring people are kissing, not you." Deceptively simple bedtime stories for adults.
Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199852-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
A superb examination of early feminist politics. As a case study for sexual politics in late 19th century Britain, Bland (Women's Studies/North London Polytechnic) focuses on the middle-class ``Men and Women's Club'' started in 1885 with the goal of scientifically discussing all things pertaining to the relations between men and women. Based on club minutes, personal communications, and public records, Bland's exhaustive analysis explores gender relations at a crucial time in the history of women's rights. The club members, Bland's prototypical feminists, appropriated religious, medical, and evolutionary theory to influence debates about the role of women in society. They turned public attention to the picture of the dangerous male unable to control his sexual desires, endangering women, children, and all morality. According to Bland, since women were considered morally superior to men, they were also responsible for the moral development of society. Women, in effect, were constantly battling the beast in all men, and this responsibility was their ticket to entering social and political arenas: Suffrage, for example, was necessary for women to implement their moral authority. In the final chapter, Bland ties together the extensive history of feminist thought with current debates. Most importantly, she outlines the danger of repeating repressive politics, pointing to the irony in current anti-porn debates: ``In presenting women as . . . passive objects of a monolithic lustful male sexuality (man as the `beast'), contemporary campaigners recreate the fantasy world of porn and all its misinformation about sexuality.'' Similarly the early feminists, in their ``zeal for the abolition of prostitution,'' focused on the sex workers rather than their male customers, obscuring the sexual inequality at the core of such gendered interaction. Packed with historical details, this work captures the spirit and conflicts of feminist thought. (13 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56584-307-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
An unsettling report from two economists on how new competitive forces are impacting Americans' social, business, and ethical lives. According to the Frank (Cornell Univ.; Passions Within Reason, 1988) and Cook (Duke Univ.), winner-take-all markets have two major characteristics: reward by relative rather than absolute performance and concentration of rewards in the hands of few top performers. In other words, these markets have rewarded winners disproportionately compared with runners-up, despite sometimes infinitesimal differences in outcomes (e.g., although Mary Lou Retton won her Olympic gold medal by only a slim margin, she went on to years of Wheaties endorsements, while the name of her rival is barely recalled). Although there are some benefits to these markets, they have widened the gulf between rich and poor, channeled citizens away from their natural talents and into less socially beneficial but potentially lucrative tasks, and even led to greater concentration of the best students into elite institutions. In recent years, winner-take-all imperatives have spread from professional sports and the performing arts to other sectors of the economy, including publishing, where the midlist book is being crowded out at the expense of the next blockbuster; law and investment banking, fields that lure flocks of college graduates looking for fast lucre; and even management. Frank and Cook ably explain the forces (e.g., global competition and technology) that have upped the competitive ante and raised the stakes so much that contestants will continually strive to maintain an advantage. To their credit, the authors urge changes in reward structures rather than direct regulations of career choices, though some of their proposals (e.g., loser paying in tort cases) might worsen the growing inequality that they cite as a result of winner- take-all markets. A thoughtful analysis of how today's haves and have-nots got this way.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-02-874034-3
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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