by Wm. Hovey Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2020
A worthy rudimentary resource for business newbies.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
A guide for displaced or disgruntled employees focuses on the fundamentals of starting a business.
The premise of entrepreneur/author Smith’s manual, a follow-up to his book Create Your Own Job Security (2018), is “that the best way for workers to insure their futures is to make their own jobs.” Beginning with an overview of today’s workplace in Chapter 1, Smith discusses older workers who are let go in favor of younger workers; the rise of the gig economy, in which he participated as a contract consultant; and the potential perils of automation. The author quickly transitions from this introductory content to the basics of establishing a business in Chapter 2. He first examines the “three stages” of forming and operating a business, “concept, people, and execution.” Smith suggests that “most people think too small” when starting a new business while cautioning “you have to be watchful about the next trend or market twists that might render your product or service obsolete.” The subsequent 14 chapters outline various elements of small-business management and execution, including the development of a concept, identification of an audience, types of businesses, funding, legal issues, business plans, names and branding, and more. Most chapters are brief, providing only perfunctory information, just enough to help an individual interested in self-employment launch a business. While some chapters cover a topic, such as patents, in adequate detail, others are quite abbreviated; for example, the chapters “Locating Your Business” and “Running Your Virtual Corporation” are a mere two and a half pages each. Still, the book covers a broad range of areas and offers some solid advice. A discussion of selling locally and regionally versus internationally should be useful for globally oriented entrepreneurs. The final chapter helpfully deals with some of the pluses and minuses of self-employment. Here, Smith addresses the psychological aspects of starting a business as well as the impact ownership can have on one’s physical health; the author shares some of his personal strategic wisdom for maintaining wellness. Smith’s uncluttered prose reflects his passion for small businesses.
A worthy rudimentary resource for business newbies.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64895-264-7
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Stratton Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
More by Wm. Hovey Smith
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Matthew Desmond ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2023
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
11
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Matthew Desmond
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.