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Business & Finance

Learning from the best

Review by bookpagedev

You’ve probably wondered how some people become so successful. Entrepreneur and author Peter Han wondered that as well, and sought to find out by interviewing 100 well-known high-achievers to learn how they made the choices that got them where they are today. In Nobodies to Somebodies: How 100 Great Careers Got Their Start, he culls wisdom from the experiences of his 100 subjects to help anyone, especially those just starting out, find a satisfying career. Han interviewed business and government leaders, writers, artists and entertainers, Nobel Prize winners and nonprofit/organizational leaders. Some of the leaders’ traits are what you’d expect strong work ethic, positive attitude and outgoing personality but other characteristics common to many of these leaders are more surprising. Of these, Han determined strong self-knowledge understanding and playing to one’s strengths and following gut instincts to be most important, while at the same time being attuned to the real world and being flexible to change are also crucial to success. These career stories can provide the catalyst for your own career development.

You’ve probably wondered how some people become so successful. Entrepreneur and author Peter Han wondered that as well, and sought to find out by interviewing 100 well-known high-achievers to learn how they made the choices that got them where they are today. In Nobodies to Somebodies: How 100 Great Careers Got Their Start, he culls […]
Business & Finance

First impressions count

Review by bookpagedev

Interviewing is like dating: if you don’t make a good first impression, you don’t get another chance. Michael Farr’s latest career book, Next-Day Job Interview: Prepare Tonight and Get the Job Tomorrow is a logical, thorough and easy read that will quickly give you the skills and the confidence to ace any interview. Farr tells you how to identify your skills, find job openings, research companies, give well thought-out answers to interview questions even the difficult, tricky and sensitive ones follow-up after the interview and negotiate your salary. Whether you’re new at interviewing or are an interviewing veteran, following Farr’s advice can increase your chances of getting the right job.

Interviewing is like dating: if you don’t make a good first impression, you don’t get another chance. Michael Farr’s latest career book, Next-Day Job Interview: Prepare Tonight and Get the Job Tomorrow is a logical, thorough and easy read that will quickly give you the skills and the confidence to ace any interview. Farr tells […]
Business & Finance

Joy to the working world

Review by bookpagedev

Dennis W. Bakke, co-founder and CEO emeritus of the AES Corporation, a worldwide energy company with 40,000 employees in 31 countries, leads his company with radical business values and practices that work. Bakke details his unorthodox philosophies and their implementation in Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job.

Bakke believes a values-driven, decentralized workplace where all workers feel important will be a joyful workplace. When employees are encouraged to make meaningful decisions and take responsibility for their actions, they can experience true joy at work. Bakke argues that the best decision-making occurs when leaders see their role as serving other employees and delegate most of their decision-making power to the lowest practicable level. And since each person is unique, fairness means treating everyone differently. Additionally, Bakke believes that the purpose of business is not to maximize the bottom line, but to steward resources in an economically responsible way. He offers candid, profound and thought-provoking ideas on life, management and corporate culture in this important read for anyone who can see potential in moving away from business as usual.

Dennis W. Bakke, co-founder and CEO emeritus of the AES Corporation, a worldwide energy company with 40,000 employees in 31 countries, leads his company with radical business values and practices that work. Bakke details his unorthodox philosophies and their implementation in Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job. Bakke believes a […]
NonfictionMemoir

Publishing’s golden age through the eyes of an industry legend

Review by Robert Weibezahl

The name Richard Seaver may not be widely known outside of publishing, but this champion of cutting-edge literature, who died in 2009, was highly regarded as a purveyor of some of the most important writing of the second half of the 20th century. It began in the 1950s in Paris, where young Seaver went to live cheaply and study as a Fulbright Scholar and ended up consorting with all manner of literati. With some other young Turks, he started the literary magazine Merlin, introducing the English-speaking world to the work of a range of postwar European writers—not least of all, another expatriate by the name of Samuel Beckett. Back in New York in the ‘60s, Seaver worked for Barney Rosset’s daring Grove Press, where he played an important role in the censorship trials over Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s novels, and shepherded the publication of William Burroughs, John Rechy and Henry Selby, among many other wild and original writers.

Seaver’s arresting memoir, The Tender Hour of Twilight, bears the words “publishing’s golden age” in its subtitle, but perhaps “mercurial” would be a more apt adjective to describe the challenges this iconic editor weathered to bring controversial writing to the fore. Proving to be as fine a writer as he was an editor, Seaver recounts many charming anecdotes about his personal and professional lives—which, really, were inextricably linked. Being roused from his sleep by a drunken stranger named Brendan Behan banging on the door of his shabby Paris digs; tracking down the elusive, largely unknown Beckett; battling legal windmills with Rosset; courting a young French woman, Jeannette Medina, who would become his devoted wife and partner-in-literary-crime for over five decades (and editor of this posthumous volume)—Seaver conjures a magical time before publishing became engulfed by corporate interests, when a talented young man with a vision could make his mark.

Full disclosure: I had a passing acquaintance with Seaver when I worked at Holt, Rinehart and Winston under his stewardship, and I remember him as a refined gentleman whose unassuming demeanor belied the fact that he had brought to light some of the most unapologetically raw writing of the age. Like the man, The Tender Hour of Twilight is often self-deprecating and always civilized. It is a paean to a time that can never be replicated, a book that will appeal to anyone who savors  the literary life.

 

The name Richard Seaver may not be widely known outside of publishing, but this champion of cutting-edge literature, who died in 2009, was highly regarded as a purveyor of some of the most important writing of the second half of the 20th century. It began in the 1950s in Paris, where young Seaver went to […]
HistoryClassics

Classic mythology for the modern reader

Review by Alden Mudge

The gods of ancient Greece and Rome were not, shall we say, moral exemplars. They waged brutal intergenerational warfare (“Father Sky hated all his children”; Zeus, “raised on Crete hidden from the eyes of his father [Cronus],” led an ultimately scorched-earth revolt to overthrow him). They mated indiscriminately with close relatives (Zeus married his ever-and-rightfully jealous sister Hera), as well as mere mortals (poor Leda, raped by Zeus disguised as a swan). They played favorites (Hera tried to impede or kill Hercules—her husband’s bastard son—at every turn during his attempt to redeem himself after a murderous psychotic break, while Aphrodite watched fretfully over the fate of her mortal son Aeneas, refugee-founder of Rome). These gods philandered on an epic scale. They countenanced or encouraged murder. They feuded and fought. In other words, they bore little resemblance to the Judeo-Christian God of scriptures. But they sure do make for a heck of a story.

A virtue of Philip Freeman’s unembellished modern retelling of the classical myths is that he doesn’t pretty these stories up. Oh My Gods does not reduce these myths to children’s fairytales, nor does it seek a prurient narrative line. Instead these retold tales usually excite wonder and questions, such as “What does such a story mean to me?” Occasionally the shorter tales feel flat, lacking in drama or emotional depth. Oh My Gods is best when it tackles longer narratives such as the labors of Hercules, the fall of Troy and the voyages of Odysseus and Aeneas, near the end of the book.

Oh My Gods is probably not a book to read from start from finish in successive sittings. While it is too reader-friendly to be a reference book, it is just the book to dip into when one comes across a mention of an unfamiliar or barely remembered myth. Freeman, who has a Ph.D. in classics from Harvard and chairs the classics department at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, writes, “my goal in this volume is . . . modest. I simply want to retell the great myths of Greece and Rome for modern readers while remaining as faithful as possible to the original sources.” In that he has largely succeeded.

The gods of ancient Greece and Rome were not, shall we say, moral exemplars. They waged brutal intergenerational warfare (“Father Sky hated all his children”; Zeus, “raised on Crete hidden from the eyes of his father [Cronus],” led an ultimately scorched-earth revolt to overthrow him). They mated indiscriminately with close relatives (Zeus married his ever-and-rightfully […]
Animals

Animal lovers gone wild

Review by bookpagedev

Just to prove you’re not the only one who’s wacko about your furry companion, we’ve rounded up several of the more bizarre entries in this season’s new pet books. These slightly skewed selections may not be catnip for everyone, but they’re nothing to sneeze at.

Is Your Pet Psychic? Richard Webster This might seem a little far-fetched at first, but if you are a real Dolittle wannabe, conversing psychically with your pet may add a new dimension to your communication skills. Webster outlines numerous tests or games that will enhance your human/animal bond while opening your eyes to a whole new world of animal awareness, enabling you, if you are successful, to communicate with animals wherever you go. Lost: Lost and Found Posters from Around the world Ian Phillips This quirky collection of actual lost and found posters from around the world, some in childish scrawl, some neatly typed, somehow transcends its picture-book format to become an oddly moving testament of the universal anguish pet owners and their pets experience, whatever language they speak, when one goes missing. The Cat That Changed My Life Bruce Eric Kaplan And finally there’s an unassuming little gem full of hairball humor called The Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk Candidly About How They Became Who They Are by hit comedy writer (Seinfeld and Six Feet Under) Bruce Eric Kaplan. Written and illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist BEK, these cat confessions are shrewd, satirical and wickedly funny. Me-YOW!

Just to prove you’re not the only one who’s wacko about your furry companion, we’ve rounded up several of the more bizarre entries in this season’s new pet books. These slightly skewed selections may not be catnip for everyone, but they’re nothing to sneeze at. Is Your Pet Psychic? Richard Webster This might seem a […]

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