A short, amusing, and practical guide to workplace dynamics.
Becker takes the reader back to high school in order to learn how to be a more effective worker in this debut guide to getting ahead.
In his 35 years working in HR departments for companies large and small, Becker learned something interesting: Adults in the workplace don’t behave demonstratively differently than teenagers in a high school. “Organizational behavior, at all levels, is best defined as adolescent,” writes Becker in his introduction, “and the behavior patterns within the business environment are deeply rooted in the volatile period of our teenage/high school years.” While the fact that human behavior doesn’t really mature after senior year is a bit disheartening, there is good news: If a 16-year-old can thrive in such an environment, so can you! Becker shows how the dynamics of high school society still apply in the workplace, from earning varsity letters and superlatives to making friends and dealing with bullies. The first chapter, for example, asserts that the in-group dynamic of “the cool kids” from high school holds true in adult human organizations, and, just as in high school, there are plenty of sycophants attempting to schmooze their way into the higher ranks. The guide helps the reader identify these familiar structures and work around them, thereby succeeding without actually descending to the emotional level of a teenager. Becker’s prose is conversational and humorous, and he delights in examining the minutiae of social situations like a table meeting: “It is clear that there are two distinct power seats at each end and senior people occupy these seats 98% of the time. Interestingly I have observed that when the two power seats are occupied the seat holders are often times of dissenting points of view which makes for excellent corporate theater.” Becker doesn’t claim to be an expert in human psychology, and he frequently admits that he has no idea why people behave the way they do. He relies mostly on his own personal experience and has no compunction about quoting song lyrics or the website Urban Dictionary. Even so, his advice mostly rings true, and his common-sense perspective makes for a memorable read.
A short, amusing, and practical guide to workplace dynamics.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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