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
Madrick looks into the vast vessel that is the US economy and pronounces it half emptyand draining. In reiterating the declinist view of America's future, the veteran financial journalist zeroes in on the problems presumably caused by the sluggish pace of domestic economic growth (2.3% per annum) and stagnant state of productivity improvements (about 1%) since 1973. Prior to that year, annual gains in GDP averaged 3.4% and productivity forged ahead at a 2% rate. This more measured pace of economic advance has curtailed the nation's capacity to meet its social/welfare commitments, to remain competitive in key commercial/industrial markets throughout the world, and to keep personal income and living standards on an upward track. Further, he points out, inflation-adjusted losses in the domestic output of goods and services from 1973 to 1993 aggregated $12 trillion. To put the impact of contemporary shortfalls in clearer perspective, Madrick offers a brisk overview of the postCivil War era, when US business and wages were expanding at a healthy clip, thanks in large measure to the economies of scale achieved by mass production and mass merchandising. These, he asserts, not only helped fragment once-homogeneous outlets but also intensified mercantile rivalries and made it appreciably easier for start-up enterprises to enter hitherto closed markets. Despite the convulsive shift in its fortunes, the author warns, the American populace remains unwarrantedly optimistic about the shape of things to come. Brief allusions to higher taxes, shared sacrifice, income maintenance, and deficit reduction apart, Madrick makes no attempt to consider ways out of the socioeconomic fix in which he perceives the US. Withal, the author insists, the citizenry had best put paid to any comforting notion that self-reliance, rugged individualism, and other classic virtues guarantee ever brighter tomorrows. A credible worst-case evaluation of what slower economic growth has and could cost the American polity if the nation fails to regain its historic momentum.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43623-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intelligible and generally absorbing rundown on how one of the world's best known but least understood financial institutions came to possibly terminal grief. In telling what he stresses is a story whose conclusion may not be known for some years, Economist correspondent Raphael makes a fine job of recounting how the underwriting collective known as Lloyd's of London became a major force in international insurance markets. He goes on to delineate the crucial role played by so- called Namesindividuals who put up capital in hopes of realizing handsome, tax-sheltered returns and assume unlimited personal liability for losses incurred by their syndicates. The author also inventories the financial wreckage left in the wake of epic storms (Andrew, Betsy, Hugo, et al.) and such man-made disasters as fire aboard an offshore oil rig. Withal, nothing prepared Names or their brokers for the havoc wreaked by obligations resulting from asbestosis and pollution-abatement claims in the US. These multibillion-dollar liabilities bankrupted hundreds of once affluent individuals. While the resultant litigation exposed a wealth of sleazy deficiencies at Lloyd's (inadequate or nonexistent disclosure of risks, overly venturesome underwriting, lack of accountability, self-dealing, and in some cases outright fraud), Crown courts have done precious little to provide surcease for Names whose lives are in ruins. Nor, despite a belated effort to professionalize a freewheeling enterprise based on trust or at least confidence, is there any assurance that Lloyd's can survive in anything like its present form. In chronicling the unresolved juridical conflicts between those with nothing left to lose and an institution whose blunders have made it an embarrassment to the UK establishment, Raphael offers more detail than may suit the taste of North American readers. On the whole, however, he provides a clear briefing on a financial fiasco whose consequences could prove earthshaking for insurers and insured alike. (12-page photo insert)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-56858-056-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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