A wide-ranging survey of the first four decades of hip-hop that vividly brings some of the culture’s biggest success stories...
A reported history of the business and businesses of hip-hop.
Talking about the many successes of Diddy, Dr. Dre, and Jay-Z, Russell Simmons says to Forbes senior media and entertainment editor Greenburg (Michael Jackson, Inc.: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of a Billion-Dollar Empire, 2014, etc.), “they just said, ‘Why don’t I do it myself?’ It’s funny that in other industries, people didn’t do it, all the rock stars, they never did it.” This entrepreneurial spirit is the author’s primary concern as he traces hip-hop from its origins in 1970s New York to its current station at the center of the cultural mainstream. Drawing from interviews with several hip-hop pioneers, Greenburg goes in depth on the early years to establish the context in which his titular figures arose. However, forefronting the three iconic moguls proves a bit ham-fisted. While they are the wealthiest individuals to emerge from hip-hop (combined wealth of at least $2.5 billion), the author strains to identify qualities these different men share that might set them apart from other major figures in hip-hop. Greenburg puts forward 50 Cent as a possible fourth king, and he devotes plenty of space to Simmons, the first hip-hop mogul, and other contemporaries such as Nas and Swizz Beatz, who have done well financially. But coming on the heels of The Defiant Ones, HBO’s tribute to the business acumen of Dre and Jimmy Iovine, and Jay-Z’s album “4:44”—among other things, a wealth-management tutorial—this book offers a pleasingly broad perspective of hip-hop as economic triumph. Furthermore, Greenburg’s vivid descriptions—a small sampling includes the “farty bass lines” of Dre’s G-funk period; Suge Knight in his notorious 1995 Source Awards appearance “looking like a gang-affiliated Kool-Aid Man”; and Diddy dressed like “a very fashionable porcupine”—make for engaging reporting that will satisfy neophytes and devotees alike.
A wide-ranging survey of the first four decades of hip-hop that vividly brings some of the culture’s biggest success stories into one place.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-31653-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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