bookpagedev

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

t steps on the career path “Not making a decision IS a decision,” says a friend. He should know. After graduating from a fine law school he lounged for two months on a sofa in his parents’ basement watching Oprah, Ricki Lake and all forms of daytime TV in his bathrobe. Was he afraid of work? No, he was avoiding the inevitable decision of what to do with his law degree. Not making a decision about a job meant he didn’t have to face the fact that he didn’t want to work for the traditional large law firm.

No time is more uncertain for college or professional school graduates than the summer they’re about to enter. Fortunately, recent career books offer valuable advice for making a smooth transition from school to work. Most experts recognize that step one in getting a job is defining what you really want to do with your career.

What’s Your Type of Career? Unlock the Secrets of Your Personality to Find Your Perfect Career Path by Donna Dunning utilizes a personality approach to finding the perfect career for you. Worksheets help you determine your personality type (analyzer? visionary? explorer?), then Dunning guides the novice through the options for each type. Don’t be embarrassed if you’re an introvert. Dunning highlights the usefulness of that personality type in the healing arts (not to mention writing) and outlines why some outgoing people may be drawn to certain careers. No Parachute Required: Translating Your Passion into a Paycheck and a Career by Jeff Gunhus is a soup-to-nuts career book with a twist. Hip and aware, Gunhus offers the traditional “How to Prepare for Your Job Search” stuff, but also starts and ends his book with the unconventional caveat that “it makes sense to do your soul-searching now, at the beginning of your career, and start on the right path the first time out of the gate.” A chapter on your inevitable and upcoming “Prelife Crisis” is priceless. Gunhus, 28, has experienced these feelings of angst and doubt up-close and personally, not to mention, recently. I loved his exercises to help weed parental expectations from your garden of experience (“My Tommy has always wanted to be a Doctor!”) and wish I had read this book before I filled my college course load with chemistry classes.

Rick Nelles, author of Proof of Performance: How to Build a Career Portfolio to Land a Great New Job, is a professional recruiter with 20 years of experience, but his book is about the times, right after college, when he made all his mistakes. Looking back, he says he waited until the last quarter of college to job search, winged it going into interviews (“thinking they would hire me on my good looks and great personality”) and didn’t even know what he wanted to do. In this book, he shows recent grads how to land a job by documenting their job skills and showing proof of their performance. Build Your Own Life Brand! by Stedman Graham is an atypical career book. The long-time companion of Oprah Winfrey, Graham owns a successful management and marketing consulting company. He shares his philosophy that “each of us has a unique blend of talents, knowledge and other personal assets” called a Life Brand. Borrowing from marketing strategy, Graham says “you create a method for sharing your gifts and putting them to their highest use” when you build the brand that is You. Above all, Graham advises, remember that transforming your talents, values and passions into your career will help to ensure that your work will be meaningful.

So how did my friend fare? He finally got off the couch and became a public defender. Later he took a job as the child advocate for a five-county court system. Recently, after soul-searching, he moved to a small law firm he loves. Life Brand, perfect personality matching, whatever you call it, with careful planning the right career choice lies just ahead.

t steps on the career path "Not making a decision IS a decision," says a friend. He should know. After graduating from a fine law school he lounged for two months on a sofa in his parents' basement watching Oprah, Ricki Lake and all forms…
NonfictionTrue Crime

Review

Review by bookpagedev

n the trail of A Cold Case As decent and democratic and objective as you think yourself to be and probably are, when you watched the movie A Few Good Men and heard Jack Nicholson as the tough Marine colonel shout, “You can’t handle the truth!” you may have felt a small, silent, shameful twinge of agreement. We often want someone to make our problems go away without being told the truth about the messy, not-necessarily-legal ways they were dealt with.

An unspoken understanding of this nature forms part of the background of A Cold Case by Philip Gourevitch, whose previous book We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award. Gourevitch has produced another potential award-winner in this slim account of the solving of a 27-year-old double murder in New York City.

In relating his part of the story to the author, Andy Rosenzweig, chief investigator for the Manhattan district attorney, acknowledges without noticeable bitterness this flexible standard toward truth on the part of the public. However, people who know Rosenzweig tell the author that it was a message from another movie High Noon, in which an upright lawman is abandoned by a spineless citizenry that has most influenced the investigator: This is a twilight world in which the two sides of the law are not always distinct and for which Rosenzweig, though an honorable cop, always felt an affinity.

To call the murder in question here an unsolved crime is not totally accurate: Everyone knew who shot and killed Richie Glennon and Pete McGinn on February 18, 1970, at McGinn’s apartment after having tangled with the pair earlier in the evening at the restaurant McGinn owned. The murderer was Frankie Koehler, a man with an extensive criminal past, including an earlier homicide in 1945 when he was only 15 years old. After the slayings, Koehler simply disappeared.

Rosenzweig knew both victims and liked Glennon especially. He had not been in on the original investigation and was reminded of the case by a chance incident in January 1997. He began to look into it and discovered that somewhere along the line the case had been closed because Koehler had been presumed for no good reason, as it turns out dead.

Rosenzweig got permission to reopen the “cold case.” Gourevitch recounts some neat deduction and legwork until Koehler was tracked down in California, living under another name. The story has about it more than a whiff of Dashiell Hammett (a quotation from one of whose stories serves as an epigraph), the Hammett of the grim, relentless harshness of life.

It is not revealing too much to say that Koehler was captured on a return trip to New York, because half of the book is about Koehler’s confession and defense. In some respects this is the most fascinating part of the story. In the videotaped confession, which Gourevitch says “has come to be regarded at the D.

A.’s office as one of the classic portraits of a criminal personality,” Koehler “is not confessing so much as taking credit for his crimes.” More than once Koehler speaks of his “desire to be understood not only as a murderer but also a sparer of life.” Koehler’s attorney, Murray Richman, a mob lawyer who revels in his lowlife connections, is a piece of work himself. Richman likes criminals for their “simplicity” and believes that “murderers are the straightest guys in the world.” In a way, he makes the reader think of John Mortimer’s British barrister, Horace Rumpole, who also has a fondness for his clients, except that Richman’s criminal contacts are considerably more dangerous and less charming than Rumpole’s “villains.” Koehler’s defense consisted primarily of a war of nerves between Richman and the prosecutors, who were worried about the problems an old case presented. Richman held out for the lowest sentence he could get. As for Koehler, in the letters he wrote while being held on Rikers Island he “seemed to believe the lashes of his own conscience were all the punishment he needed.” When Gourevitch went to California to see where Koehler had lived, he found that the murderer was remembered fondly by those who had known him. When he went to visit Rosenzweig, who had retired to run a bookstore in Rhode Island 12 days before Koehler’s sentencing, he found him working, unofficially, on another case.

The only thing wrong with this book is that it is over too quickly. We hunger to know even more about these intriguing characters.

Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer in Wisconsin.

n the trail of A Cold Case As decent and democratic and objective as you think yourself to be and probably are, when you watched the movie A Few Good Men and heard Jack Nicholson as the tough Marine colonel shout, "You can't handle the…
Business & Finance

GOOD BUSINESS

Review by bookpagedev

  As regular readers of this column know, I like easy. Easy chairs, easy-to-read books, gadgets that make my life easier. I know Eyewitness to Wall Street: Four Hundred Years of Bulls, Bears, Busts and Booms by David Colbert doesn’t sound like an "easy" book, but this historical overview of Wall Street, from the scene in New Amsterdam in the 1600s to the confession of Ivan Boesky, gave me a vast array of Wall Street information in quick chapters and first-hand fashion. I curled up with this book on a recent flight and was transported to news headlines from the 1940s. Key areas of history I’ve always meant to study but never quite gotten to (the phenom of the Nifty Fifty, innovations at the Chicago Merc, Michael Milken) . . . well . . . thank heavens for David Colbert. He has drawn from diaries, private letters, memoirs and magazines to create a historical montage of Wall Street’s blemishes and triumphs. Chapters from major books (Liars’ Poker) and news articles about Wall Street pepper the pages. I feel as if someone did all the research I was supposed to do for a college term paper, put it all together and sent it to me, ready to present. Yup, that’s what I like, nice and easy.

 

  As regular readers of this column know, I like easy. Easy chairs, easy-to-read books, gadgets that make my life easier. I know Eyewitness to Wall Street: Four Hundred Years of Bulls, Bears, Busts and Booms by David Colbert doesn't sound like an "easy" book,…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Batter up There are several schools of baseball. One follows numbers, the statistics that drive the game and rivet baseball fans. Another dwells on nostalgia, a sense that things were better, purer in the “old days.” Then there are those like Robert Benson, who take an almost spiritual approach, honoring the game as a precious legacy to be passed from one generation to the next.

In The Game: One Man, Nine Innings: A Love Affair With Baseball, Benson combines several perspectives: those of a writer, a father and, of course, a baseball fan. One can imagine accompanying the author to his game of choice, a rather ordinary minor league affair between the Iowa Cubs and the Nashville Sounds, as he sits back during the course of nine innings to ruminate on myriad topics. With writing that is both spare and reverential, Benson compares the plays of a game with the joys and sorrows of day-to-day living. He notes that “baseball is a game of routine things.” In the minor league game he chronicles, “Of the fifty-one outs, only three or four of them came on great plays, or even above average plays.” The Game will be categorized as a sports book, but like baseball itself, it’s a metaphor for life. Sometimes you hit a home run; sometimes you make an error. As the game winds down, the author hopes his children will one day recall the important life lessons it offers: “I wish for them that they will remember that there will be days when the best that can be done is to move the runner . . . that even the best of us . . . strike out a fair amount.”

Batter up There are several schools of baseball. One follows numbers, the statistics that drive the game and rivet baseball fans. Another dwells on nostalgia, a sense that things were better, purer in the "old days." Then there are those like Robert Benson, who take…

Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A driven perfectionist, choreographer-director Jerome Robbins was startlingly prolific. But in pushing at the creative boundaries of ballet and Broadway, he was also maddeningly cruel a maestro of insult and innuendo. Complex and colorful, he snares the biographical spotlight in Dance with Demons. Written by Greg Lawrence, who knows his way around the dance floor (he teamed with ballerina Gelsey Kirkland for her memoir Dancing on My Grave), this is the first account of his professional triumphs and off-stage travails. Robbins, who died in 1998 at age 79, grew up loving dance, taking lessons as a child (to the irritation of his father). As a teenager, he was influenced by the pioneering modern dance artists of the 1930s, who explored political and social themes. Then came a project under choreographer Antony Tudor, whose ballet rehearsals resembled psychodramas, complete with Stanislavski acting techniques and Freudian insight. Robbins’ own ballets would reverberate with Tudor’s influence. One of Robbins’ most famous works, West Side Story, was also one of his most audacious. He once talked of doing a Jewish-Catholic take on Romeo and Juliet, but after reading headlines about juvenile delinquency, Robbins turned West Side Storyinto the saga of the Sharks and the Jets, and Tony and Maria. From the night of its 1957 premiere, West Side Story was a monster hit. Thanks to his troublesome behavior during the making of the West Side Story movie, Hollywood eluded the man whose work on Gypsy, Fiddler on the Roof and The King and I garnered him five Tonys and two Academy Awards. Robbins was further hampered by his personal relationships. In an era in which homosexuality was taboo, he was involved with men as well as women. Dance with Demons is full of fascinating quotes from Robbins’ associates and wonderful minutiae about the ballet world. Hundreds of the choreographer’s colleagues spoke with Greg Lawrence for this book, and the interviews help flesh out his lively portrait of Robbins. An engaging biography of a complex man, Dance with Demons brings Jerome Robbins center stage right where he belongs.

Pat Broeske writes from California.

 

A driven perfectionist, choreographer-director Jerome Robbins was startlingly prolific. But in pushing at the creative boundaries of ballet and Broadway, he was also maddeningly cruel a maestro of insult and innuendo. Complex and colorful, he snares the biographical spotlight in Dance with Demons. Written by…

NonfictionTrue Crime

True-crime writing at its best

Review by bookpagedev

Dominick Dunne became a chronicler of criminal justice for the rich and well-connected after his own daughter was murdered in 1982 by her boyfriend. But his fascination with high-profile crime first surfaced during his youth, as he admits in his new book, Justice, in a chapter on the 1943-44 trial and conviction of Wayne Lonergan for the murder of his socialite wife and brewing heiress Patricia Burton. "I was a teenager in boarding school at this time," he writes, "and I remember risking expulsion every afternoon by sneaking into the town of New Milford, Connecticut, during sports period to read the latest accounts in the New York Daily Mirror and the New York Journal American at the local drugstore."

The 18 articles in this collection were written originally for Vanity Fair. They cover the trials of the Menendez brothers for the shotgun slaying of their parents, of Claus von Bulow for the attempted murder of his wife and the still-in-progress proceedings against Kennedy kinsman Michael Skakel for the bludgeoning death of young Martha Moxley. But Dunne devotes most of these pieces to the endlessly absorbing trials of O.J. Simpson both the one he won and the one he lost. Dunne relates that he became such a familiar fixture in court that during the civil trial Simpson approached him smiling and offering his hand. Dunne says he declined to shake hands but notes that Simpson despite all the revelations about him still possessed an almost irresistible charm.

Dunne is at his best when revealing the personalities and social backgrounds of the principals who confront each other in the courtroom. A dogged gatherer of facts and gossip, he always seems to know the right people insiders he bumps into at elegant parties who have tantalizing information to share about the trial in question. He makes no pretense of being objective, freely coloring his accounts with his own impressions and biases. He is contemptuous of Judge Lance Ito in the first Simpson trial, less than dazzled by prosecuting attorney Marcia Clark, but quite taken with police detective Mark Fuhrman.

Socially privileged himself, Dunne brings an insider’s perspective to his coverage of the trials of the well-to-do that few other crime reporters can hope to match. Always perceptive, ever engaging, with Justice, Dunne has done it again.

Edward Morris writes from Nashville.

 

Dominick Dunne became a chronicler of criminal justice for the rich and well-connected after his own daughter was murdered in 1982 by her boyfriend. But his fascination with high-profile crime first surfaced during his youth, as he admits in his new book, Justice, in a…

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

A novel of mythic proportions

Review by bookpagedev

It’s appropriate that a writer who came to this country as an adult should attempt to forge a new mythology for his adopted homeland. One of the dominant myths of the U.S. is that of eternal newness, and Neil Gaiman’s new novel insists that, in time, the past will catch up with us and we should be ready for it.

Gaiman, an Englishman by birth, has obviously been closely observing his new home. American Gods is a big book, filled with vivid imagery, wacky locations, vigorous writing and intriguing, if sometimes scary, ideas and characters.

From the start we realize something odd is going on. People don’t usually watch a passenger leave on a plane, then run into the same person at a bar in the next small town. Young men with eyes the color of old computer monitors, smoking something that smells like burning electrical parts, don’t usually get driven around in large limos by large men who are more than willing to do their bidding. From the shocking beginning which we won’t spoil for you onward, Gaiman takes us across the country, stopping off at some famous roadside attractions as well as some lesser known spots: the House on the Rock in Wisconsin figures prominently, as does Lebanon, Kansas, the exact center of America. But, as Gaiman notes in a Caveat, and Warning for Travelers, "This is a work of fiction, not a guidebook." In American Gods there are pre-Columbus visits to these shores by Norwegians, Polynesians, Irish, Chinese and more. When these visitors died out, left or were killed, Gaiman explains, their gods stayed behind. Sometimes they changed form, grew or shrank, but they were always present.

The old gods’ existence is threatened by the new gods, such as Media and Cancer. One of the old harsh gods has a plan to survive, and he will do whatever it takes to claw his way back to power.

American Gods will draw you in, make you want to drive or take the train across the country to experience the vastness that is the USA. Following the journeys taken in the book would make a heck of a road trip, but you’ll be praying the events of the novel don’t happen to you.

Gavin Grant lives in Brooklyn, where he reviews, writes and publishes speculative fiction.

It's appropriate that a writer who came to this country as an adult should attempt to forge a new mythology for his adopted homeland. One of the dominant myths of the U.S. is that of eternal newness, and Neil Gaiman's new novel insists that, in…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Staying ahead of the curve I love anything that makes my life easier, and Profit From the Evening News: Using Leading Economic Indicators to Make Smart Money Decisions by Marie Bussing-Burks does just that. Bussing-Burks promises that if you take a little time to learn about the leading economic indicators (which are read aloud almost every night on the national news) you can plan your money strategies months before the economy has actually entered bad times or good times. We all know about the importance of the Federal Funds Rate, but Bussing-Burks says you need to know more. By following the money supply, S&andP 500, durable goods orders and six other economic indicators, she says smart investors can see for themselves the coming changes in the stock market.

Bussing-Burks first explains the common and easy-to-find indicators, creates easy ways to track them (by creating your own spreadsheet) and explains how to predict where markets are going based on this data. I thought this would be tough, but it actually takes about three minutes a week to find these indicators on the TV or the Web. I may have missed the signs of the recent downturn, but with Bussing-Burks’ help, I’ll be way ahead on the predictors for the next upswing.

Staying ahead of the curve I love anything that makes my life easier, and Profit From the Evening News: Using Leading Economic Indicators to Make Smart Money Decisions by Marie Bussing-Burks does just that. Bussing-Burks promises that if you take a little time to learn…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he World War II era was filled with turmoil and sorrow for everyone involved. In Ann Howard Creel’s debut novel, The Magic of Ordinary Days, she convincingly relates how life on the home front could be just as unsettling as the tumult on the battlefields. For Olivia Dunne, times were particularly trying as she worked through her own emotional upheaval, first dealing with the death of her beloved mother and her alienation from her minister father, then discovering that she is pregnant after a careless act of passion. To maintain her family’s respectable reputation, Olivia is forced to leave her home in Denver to enter into an arranged marriage with Ray Singleton, a farmer who lives on the prairies of southern Colorado. Her dreams of becoming an archaeologist are dashed as she sets her sights on a future of being a wife and mother.

The Singleton farm is remote, as is its owner. Ray, although a kind man, is used to living on his own and has difficulty dealing with another person in his home. It’s up to Olivia to establish her own routines, as Ray returns to the fields to work his crops of sugar beets, onions and beans. The ladies of the community church try to include Olivia in their activities. But they are reserved, and she knows they realize she is carrying another man’s child. It isn’t until the arrival of the Japanese farm workers from a nearby internment camp that Olivia finds friendship in the form of two teenaged sisters, Lorelei and Rose Umahara. Like Olivia, the sisters must learn to adapt to their confinement while their passion for living seeks other outlets.

In The Magic of Ordinary Days, Creel has captured a unique page in history as she weaves a tale inspired by actual events. She includes many little-known details of the Japanese-American internment camps and German POW camps that were scattered throughout the country. Her use of the desolate, dusty prairie setting of southern Colorado echoes the desperation felt by her character, Olivia. As a former resident of Colorado, I well recognized the small farm communities of La Junta, Rocky Ford and Trinidad.

This is a gentle but powerful novel, combining a story of bittersweet love with a poignant account of the journey toward self-realization and acceptance.

Sharon Galligar Chance is a book reviewer in Wichita Falls, Texas.

he World War II era was filled with turmoil and sorrow for everyone involved. In Ann Howard Creel's debut novel, The Magic of Ordinary Days, she convincingly relates how life on the home front could be just as unsettling as the tumult on the battlefields.…
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

very bachelor actor-bartender living in New York City needs a female friend to serve as a sounding-board, advisor and drill sergeant. Johnny Downs, the protagonist of James Wolcott’s The Catsitters, has a doozy in Darlene Rider. Though she lives in Georgia and dispenses counsel over the phone, Darlene’s presence in this novel reverberates loudly. She advises Johnny on dating, analyzes Polaroid photos he sends of his potential love interests and ships a pair of eccentric women to watch his cat while he’s out of town. Despite Darlene’s protestations to the contrary, Johnny seems to do OK for himself, as a succession of attractive women filter in and out of his life (though more often out than in). By observing Johnny’s daily habits, we become familiar with the routine of the ordinary actor tend bar at parties, audition, shoot corny commercials and repeat the cycle ad nauseum. The story itself seems simple enough, revolving around Johnny’s search for romance and all the usual complications accompanying such a quest. Yet in the hands of Wolcott, literary critic for Vanity Fair, a possibly mundane plot becomes incessantly interesting. This is a funny book, almost anthropological in its insights into contemporary mating rituals. Wolcott offers balanced perspectives from both genders, with extended sections of dialogue between Johnny and Darlene; the author refuses to choose sides, instead allowing us to witness a sardonic battle of the sexes. Readers who have participated in the dating game will chuckle knowingly with nearly every page. Not only does Johnny’s narrative voice sparkle with a dry, almost deadpan wit, but this intermittently employed actor proves a genuinely likable guy: funny, sincere, a cat lover someone we can root for.

A host of characters season the story: Gleason, Johnny’s best friend and fellow actor who drops sarcastic comments regarding romance and alcohol, and Claudia, the stunning, haughty actress who haunts Johnny with her frequent appearances and disappearances. All help push the narrative forward, adding generous dollops of quirkiness to the book. Wolcott doesn’t pretend to have any great answers to the question what is love? but he does offer us a few suggestions, neatly packaged as an entertaining comic novel.

Michael Paulson teaches English in Baltimore.

very bachelor actor-bartender living in New York City needs a female friend to serve as a sounding-board, advisor and drill sergeant. Johnny Downs, the protagonist of James Wolcott's The Catsitters, has a doozy in Darlene Rider. Though she lives in Georgia and dispenses counsel over…
FictionWomen's Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

hose of you who read Pearl Cleage’s What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day (an Oprah book club selection) will remember the protagonist’s sister, Joyce Mitchell, who ran a social club of sorts for teenaged moms. Cleage’s new novel, I Wish I Had a Red Dress, continues the story of Joyce and her girls and the men who shake up their worlds for good and for ill.

A resident of a rural African-American town called Idlewild, Joyce has eaten much bitterness. She’s not only a widow, but her children have also died, and when the book opens she’s in the process of being humiliated by a legislative committee for daring to seek state money for her girls. She’s teaching them, with varying degrees of success, to be free and strong women, which largely means crawling out from under the thumbs of their abusive or irresponsible boyfriends. Since the boyfriends tend to ratchet up their abuse during the Superbowl, Joyce stages an anti-Superbowl party which evolves into the “The Sewing Circus Film Festival for Free Women,” featuring films by black directors with strong black women as lead characters. Of course the town’s young men resent the idea of their girlfriends focusing on something other than them, and an event occurs during the festival that underscores the book’s theme of men inevitably barging in to mess up women’s happiness.

Cleage writes in a brisk and credible style, creating instantly recognizable characters. Some of the chapters are no more than a page long, and all of them have titles, some delicious, like “This Denzel Thing,” “When Junior Started Trippin’.” and “The Specificity of Snowflakes.” The girls, especially the bright and responsible Tomika, are valiant, and the boys, especially the brutish Lattimore brothers, are wonderfully hateful. Joyce, though warm-hearted and giving, still has a core of resentment against the perfidy of men, though she was married to a loving and responsible one for many years. Yet Cleage herself is unflagging in her belief in the inherent strength of women. I Wish I Had a Red Dress is a sensitive story of sisterhood, courage and self-determination, always leavened with touches of humor and compassion.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

hose of you who read Pearl Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day (an Oprah book club selection) will remember the protagonist's sister, Joyce Mitchell, who ran a social club of sorts for teenaged moms. Cleage's new novel, I Wish I Had a…
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ike most of America, Cape Cod has seen the consumer spectacle wash up on its shores. Determined to help nature reclaim her course, one Cape resident decides to blow up some of the area’s most expensive beachfront homes.

Spectacular Happiness, a provocative new novel by Peter Kramer, tells the story of a middle-aged junior college English instructor struggling to reclaim the ideals of his youth. Once again Kramer, a psychiatrist who wrote the nonfiction bestsellers Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?, digs into the human psyche, this time in a work of fiction.

Chip Samuels, a handyman and teacher with radical notions, lives in the small home his immigrant father built alongside the enormous estates on the Cape. Also living nearby is Sukey Kuykendahl, Samuels’ former flame and current partner in crime. The two were linked by a love affair between their parents, and their devotion has endured into adulthood.

More important is Samuels’ devotion to his wife Anais and the idealistic life they once shared. In a home full of free love and free spirits, Anais developed her pottery while striking out for months at a time to discover her soul. But as Anais’ line of pottery grows in popularity, the link between the couple blurs.

Written as a journal for Samuels’ teenage son, the novel intentionally glosses over the most private details of his life as a terrorist bomber. Unlike a typical beach read packed with riveting action scenes, Kramer’s novel delivers with psychological insights. Motivated by ideals, Sukey and Samuels set out to change the minds of rich vacationers and national consumers. Hunted by the FBI and the scandal-driven media, Samuels turns to his journal to explain his actions to his son and the wife he once cherished. The result is a revealing look into the criminal mind and the genius required to out-maneuver pursuing law enforcement officers.

Kramer builds his work on the mind’s desire. It is this desire that leads Samuels to risk all for the sake of gaining back everything, particularly his son. In the end, Spectacular Happiness is an explosion of ideals and a blasting comment on our era of conspicuous consumption.

Amber Stephens is a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.

ike most of America, Cape Cod has seen the consumer spectacle wash up on its shores. Determined to help nature reclaim her course, one Cape resident decides to blow up some of the area's most expensive beachfront homes.

Spectacular Happiness, a provocative…
Business & Finance

On the road again

Review by bookpagedev

Travel just isn’t what it used to be. Between airport delays, traffic snarls and the hotel that forgot your wake-up call, the Road Warrior’s life is one hassle after another. It doesn’t have to be that way. This month, some on-the-road advice for business travelers. At last, someone has written a quick, sensible book of lists, reminders and advice for the occasional traveler, seasoned pro or neophyte. Organize Your Business Travel: Simple Routines for Managing Your Work When You’re Out of the Office by Ronni Eisenberg with Kate Kelly is a compact solution to many of the dilemmas, questions and organizational conundrums the confused business traveler encounters every time he steps out of the office.

Travel is a major headache for many professionals these days, but in the global corporate environment, it’s a necessary part of doing business. And for a successful trip, being organized is the best preparation. From who’s watching the kids to what kind of luggage works best for toting that new business casual wardrobe, organizing travel takes mental preparation. Organize Your Business Travel addresses an amazing number of these issues with rapid ease. It even covers car travel and how to organize your business life in an automobile.

Eisenberg has thought of everything. I tucked this book under my arm on a recent trip, and from mail management to childcare, I conquered the major obstacles keeping me from getting to my plane on time. With her encouragement I took a long, hard look at my travel gear and bought a new briefcase. Even my luggage was repacked with some practical advice from Eisenberg. I reassessed my need and understanding of the Palm Pilot and learned how to use one. If I can change my ways, anyone can. Organize Your Business Travel makes a great travel companion for consultants, or anyone else who travels frequently, for business or pleasure.

Down time is a major impediment to business travel. Airport delays, layovers and unscheduled time between appointments eat up productive work time. A new audiobook, Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program by Mark Stevens provides an excellent alternative to wasted minutes. The audio outlines the key components of Harvard Business School’s elite Advanced Management Program (AMP), a nine-week course whose alums include CEOs and CFOs of many Fortune 500 companies. At its heart, Extreme Management is about excellence in leadership, uncovering financial and strategic tactics of the world’s best companies in amusing and informative anecdotal stories and interviews with AMP alums.

Stevens, president of a global marketing firm and author of several books on financial figures of the ’80s and ’90s, identifies the lessons and insights that faculty and students of the AMP found most compelling and sets out to condense what is ordinarily a nine-week, $44,000 regimen into a crash course that can be absorbed in the space of an airplane flight. The two-tape audio provides a simplified but not bare bones outline of the book and an easy way to pass travel time. While AMP raises mid-level managers to elite status, Extreme Management prompts the average business traveler to re-evaluate the office status quo. That’s hitting two birds downtime and leadership with one stone.

Speaking of travel-friendly business reading, The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma Is Transforming the Way We Work by Subir Chowdhury is a quick book, easily finished on one airplane flight, that explains in a fictional format the principles behind the business initiative, Six Sigma.

For the uninitiated, Six Sigma is the latest fad in management strategy. Embraced by Allied Signal, GE and other major corporations, Six Sigma is a top-down approach used to develop quality in products, empower employees and fatten the corporate bottom line. The focus, experts say, is to eliminate waste, mistakes and inevitable rework by following a scientific structure to achieve results. Following on the heels of ISO 9000 initiatives and Total Quality Management, many are skeptical of Six Sigma’s charms.

The Power of Six Sigma is an antidote to the skepticism. Chowdhury explains in simple, interesting fashion the basic principles behind the initiative. Anyone who wonders why businesses don’t seem to respond to what customers want should read this intriguing little book, and as always, anyone in business should understand the latest management initiatives. Improvement is the name of the game in any business, and Six Sigma is another way to approach the game of business and win at it.

Have time in the airport to sink your teeth into something a little meatier? e-Volve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, is a witty, intelligent look at the business culture created by emerging Internet companies and the resulting changes in the playing field for traditional businesses and other digital wannabes. Smart, clever and right on target, e-Volve is a valuable look at the coming age in the workplace.

When you open this book and see the song Kanter wrote to celebrate the e-volution, you may check the book jacket (as I did) to make sure this is a Harvard Business School title. But Evolve! The Song illustrates one main corollary of this tale.

Why are you so silent, has the cat got your tongue? Tech talk is what the older folks can learn from the young.

But the Net generation must absorb from the past, enduring values of service, how to build things that last. Yes, this is a big book to carry in your briefcase, but an excellent place to visit and revisit the trends of the New Economy and the cultural changes that economy has wrought. Often a flight is the only chance to catch up on reading and thinking about new ideas and business trends. The next time your airline announces Flight 207 has been delayed for an hour while we track down our flight crew, don’t get angry . . . look at it as an opportunity to expand your horizons.

Briefly noted The Thing in the Bushes: Turning Organizational Blind Spots into Competitive Advantage by Kevin Graham Ford and James P. Osterhaus. The thing in the bushes is a metaphor for core personnel problems that undermine the strategic advantage of great companies. Ford and Osterhaus, a consultant and a psychologist respectively, develop relational principles that help firms hunt down and destroy the thing. Even if your business doesn’t have a lurking bogeyman, The Thing is an interesting study in organizational behavior and its consequences for developing strategic plans.

Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty by Paul R. Timm, Ph.D. A lot of companies flirt but never get married to customer service, says Timm. These days one of the main thrusts of Six Sigma initiatives is to provide customer-focused improvements in quality and service. Seven Power Strategies fills in the missing blanks with a seven-step employee empowerment process that helps build customer retention. Timm provides evaluation exercises and short, pointed stories to teach customer strategy step-by-step and gives the impetus for companies to walk down that wedding aisle.

Sharon Secor is a Nashville-based business writer.

 

Travel just isn't what it used to be. Between airport delays, traffic snarls and the hotel that forgot your wake-up call, the Road Warrior's life is one hassle after another. It doesn't have to be that way. This month, some on-the-road advice for business travelers.…

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