An inventive, imaginative, and beautifully crafted management guide.
Consultants Danley and Hughes tackle various business-management challenges in a simulated medical manual.
This debut assesses an array of management problems as if they were “diseases and disorders,” using a highly stylized format. Each entry details the aspects of each “condition”—including “healthy and normal function,” “causes of dysfunction,” risks, symptoms, prognosis, and treatment. The relatively short descriptions and bulleted text make for a book that’s easy to scan as well as read in-depth. It also calls attention to a multitude of typical workplace problems by ingeniously classifying them into “personality-based diseases and disorders” and “culture- or system-based diseases and disorders.” The book includes more than 50 separate, richly described conditions, each illustrated with a brief but relevant case study, and the descriptions are spot-on throughout; for example, “Abusive Insecurity” is defined as “The tendency to denigrate employees after they experience a significant success in order to keep them humble, fearful, and dependent.” The prognosis for this condition includes a perceptive warning: “The true irony is that by behaving in this manner, the boss finally makes his or her worst fear a reality.” Although the overall work has a serious purpose, the style is occasionally tongue-in-cheek—particularly regarding the diseases’ names, such as “Foot-in-Mouth Disease” and “The Perpetrating Savior.” There’s real genius in this book, though; the authors’ ability to parse out the individual conditions is remarkable, as are their keen insights into each specific management problem. A final, succinct chapter offers their take on management ills in general: “If we ever hope to operate worthy organizations, these diseases and disorders must be identified, understood, and treated.”
An inventive, imaginative, and beautifully crafted management guide.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4834-5456-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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