An engrossing and personable look at real-life business decisions and the man behind them.
A memoir chronicles the life of an American man in business and beyond.
Pease was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1943. Despite some fears of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, he recalls Spokane as a pleasant place. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington before pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School. Harvard solidified his interest in making businesses work. Much of the book covers the nitty-gritty of things, such as trying to see a racquetball court company called Wallbangers through a difficult period. Later in the author’s career, he moved into venture capital, where he helped to fund potentially lucrative companies. As he explains of the venture capital world, “You have to be willing to explore industries and situations in which you have little experience, and you must quickly master what you need to know and do in each unique circumstance to be successful.” He also became interested in Russia. He eventually found his way to the board of the U.S. Russia Investment Fund. Between his personal life and business dealings, Pease traveled to Russia some 50 times. Drawing on this experience, he provides insights into the present-day situation in the country as well as some more general political and personal views. He outlines what it means to be a conservative. Though he is a gentile, he also discusses (and later delineates the points of) his published works on the success of Jewish people.
Pease’s memoir covers all these various topics in a no-nonsense manner. On the specifics of working with Russia, the author asserts: “We pursued ways of restoring significant American expertise about Russia because that kind of knowledge had declined precipitously after the end of the Cold War.” Though definitions are provided for many acronyms, it can be easy at times to get lost in the jargon, as with how “as part of the USAID ‘dual mandate’ for enterprise funds, the Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) was established in 2002.” Yet it is the book’s willingness to dig into the details that gives it its appeal. Portions on business interactions are telling. For instance, one company’s attempt to use vintage rail cars to transport weekend skiers between San Jose, California, and Reno, Nevada, failed, thanks in part to a recession and a less-than-ideal snow season. The takeaways about what made some companies crumble while others prospered are not abstract theories. They are related by someone who was there. The same is true for the sections on business ideas, like the importance of entrepreneurs in the post-Soviet era. Pease is, after all, someone who has been interacting with Russian concerns for years. Some readers may not be interested in all of the success stories, such as the one about building an excellent home in California. Yet on the whole, readers get not just textbook management cases, but also a well-rounded picture of the business world.
An engrossing and personable look at real-life business decisions and the man behind them.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-943471-55-3
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Deucalion
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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