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CHASING DIRT

Name: CHASING DIRT
Author: Suellen Hoy
ISBN: 0-19-509420-4

THE AMERICAN PURSUIT OF CLEANLINESS

by Suellen Hoy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1995

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A nosedive into the American obsession with cleanliness that explains how this middle-class attitude was formed. Although social reformers had crusaded for better sanitation in the first half of the 19th century, it was the Civil War that impelled America on the road to cleanliness, asserts Hoy, coauthor of From Dublin to New Orleans (not reviewed). Quoting liberally from contemporary sources to give a sense of time and place, she concludes that it was the desire to cut death rates in army camps that spurred creation of the US Sanitary Commission. British experience in the Crimean War had strongly suggested that sanitation was essential to the survival of troops, and by the Civil War's end military personnel and civilians alike had absorbed the lesson that dirt was linked to sickness. In subsequent decades, periodic outbreaks of cholera, yellow fever, and typhoid drove home the message. Hoy depicts settlement workers in the big cities teaching immigrants—the ``great unwashed'' from the European countryside—that cleanliness was the American way. Middle-class social reformers directed similar efforts at African-Americans moving to northern cities from the rural south; cleanliness was seen as the way to assimilation and acceptance. In the 20th century, soap manufacturers and their advertising agents joined with educators and health officials in promoting hygiene as the key to success, and according to Hoy the message was irresistible. The author sees America's quest for cleanliness as peaking in the 1950s, when women still had the time and the means to pursue it. Today, she states, the dirt theory of disease has been replaced by more scientific explanations, busy working women care less about spotless households, and factors other than a whiter-than-white shirt are seen as essential to financial success. Occasionally repetitious and overly detailed, but in toto a spirited account of changing American mores. (35 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-19-509420-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

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A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

Categories:

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.