A succinct and approachable handbook for all the stuff that comes after the veterinary degree.
A debut guide seeks to flesh out the often lacking business education of veterinary school graduates.
Jones and Harbin open their thought-provoking work by cycling through some common comments made by recent graduates of medical or veterinary schools like “I didn’t study medicine so I could obsess about business,” and “I just want to take care of animals; I’ll let somebody else handle the money.” And in response to such assertions, the authors ask a crucially simple question: “Where did these doctors get the idea that they would be exempt from the forces that rule everyone else’s lives?” Jones and Harbin are quick to dispel this notion, acquainting such recent graduates with the whole world of business-related items they’ll need to know about in order to make any actual use of the degrees they worked so hard to acquire. These matters include attracting patients, coping with veterinary referrals, conducting business correspondence, managing staff, investing in a retirement plan, and—for those who choose to go this route—negotiating the often Byzantine world of large corporate caregiving organizations. The authors point out that most medical and veterinary schools offer their students little or no practical preparation along these lines, and their book is intended as a one-source corrective to that oversight. Here readers will learn the intricacies of contract negotiations, operations management, personal and corporate finance, and the best (and worst) techniques for building a practice. Elsewhere the advice gets more specific to the veterinary world, with Jones and Harbin describing the various types of pet owners, for instance, and the different diplomatic approaches necessary for dealing with them. Many of this manual’s readers will find themselves in some kind of managerial position whether they plan for it or not, and on this subject the authors are at their strongest, dispensing some simple wisdom about how to get people to do what you want. Novice veterinarians should find the volume invaluable, but medical and business school graduates will likely discover a variety of worthy tips in these pages as well.
A succinct and approachable handbook for all the stuff that comes after the veterinary degree.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5456-0136-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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