An indispensable resource for project managers.
A manual describes how to detect and manage building projects hijacked by political agendas.
Based on their own considerable experience, the Osmans (Buildings, Projects, and Babies, 2017) have written a book specifically designed to help the managers of construction projects undermined by furtive political schemes. For example, an undertaking can be commandeered by a surreptitious plan to embezzle government resources for private gain or redirect them to fund illegal activity. The authors provide concrete guidance regarding how to spot such ulterior motives that can potentially destroy a project; for example, irrational anomalies in spending or hiring, an inexplicable indifference to quality, and a penchant for gratuitous delay on the part of the client might be signs of political skulduggery. The Osmans also counsel readers how to delicately manage such a predicament should it arise. The crux of their advice is that managers, whenever possible, should satisfy their project obligations and adapt to whatever challenges might be produced by clients’ unscrupulous intentions. The authors illustrate their lessons by fashioning fictionalized cases; for example, a massive project in Bolivia is hampered by a client’s late-in-the-game demand for a two-story penthouse, a request specifically aimed at slowing down development. The Osmans also persuasively argue that part of the problem is that project management is largely unregulated, bereft of the standard licensing requirements so common in other professions. They propose and describe a Federal Department of Project Investigation to devise and enforce standards and protect project managers from nefarious clients. The book is both clearly and cleverly written, crafted around an analogy between the primary players on a project and the team that delivers a baby (the project manager is the nurse and the father the client). The authors are veterans in the field, and their professional expertise is unquestionable. Unfortunately, an extended discussion of the superiority of border cities in the construction of border walls devolves into a thematically incongruent detour that should be the subject of its own monograph. Still, this remains a valuable reference guide.
An indispensable resource for project managers.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2017
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 Yorkerstaff 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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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