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Business & Finance

Building on your strengths

Review by bookpagedev

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom, tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice (“If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails” and “Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.”) to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that? It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality &and Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work (New American Library, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 1577312287) would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a “friend.” Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve […]
History

Brothers in arms: Walt Whitman and his family in wartime

Review by bookpagedev

During the 19th century, as the United States developed economically, many people broke family ties, some forever, and headed west or to sea where they could reinvent themselves. A notable exception was the Whitman family of Brooklyn. Walter Sr. was a master carpenter and engaged in building houses. There were nine children in all; at a time of high infant mortality, only one died in infancy. The best known today is the second oldest, Walt, who became perhaps the most original American poet of the century. But his youngest brothers—George, who distinguished himself as an officer in the Union army during the Civil War, and Jeff, who became one of the century’s great engineers—were well-known and admired during their lifetimes. The entire family, and especially these three brothers, remained close throughout their lives.

Robert Roper, award-winning author of works of fiction and nonfiction, explores the brothers’ relationship and, by extension, the many wounded Civil War soldiers Walt visited in hospitals in the superb Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War. Walt made more than 600 visits and claimed to have tended to 80,000 to 100,000 men in his role as a nurse, or, as he preferred, "visitor and consolatory." His close friend and biographer, John Burroughs, described him as a "great tender mother-man" at a time when most nurses were men. Walt wrote that it was a womanly, indeed a motherly, approach that was most helpful in the hospitals.

Roper shows in detail how crucial his relationship to his family was in this endeavor and in his development as a writer and poet. He also describes how the three Whitman brothers were skillful in dealing with other people, especially other men, good at personal politicking and winning their trust, while advancing their own self-interests. He shows how each brother was always alert to the needs of the others.

A key role in the family was played by their mother, Louisa, who remained Walt’s most intimate correspondent until her death in 1873. After her husband’s death in 1855, her sons, primarily Walt, were responsible for the family income. George, who led soldiers in 21 major battles and was in a Confederate prison camp toward the end of the war, also wrote letters to her that dealt with virtually every aspect of his experience. Roper strongly disagrees with those Whitman biographers who have portrayed her as ignorant and incurious; instead, he demonstrates her ability to understand and appreciate a wide range of experience.

This fine book has several focuses. First, it is a biography of a family, especially during the war years, told in great part with a judicious use of letters. Secondly, Roper details Walt’s work in the hospitals and shows how he was able to write about it at a time when other gifted writers such as Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean Howells did not write about the war at all. Roper is aware of Walt’s limitations in this regard—he was a knowledgeable noncombatant but never saw a battle in progress and in writing of soldiers’ experiences, he did not get into their complex feelings. And finally, Roper probes Whitman’s thoughts about death, suffering and killing, among other subjects.

Roper’s evocative narrative impressively conveys the life and times of one of America’s greatest writers in a time of the nation’s greatest crisis.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

 

During the 19th century, as the United States developed economically, many people broke family ties, some forever, and headed west or to sea where they could reinvent themselves. A notable exception was the Whitman family of Brooklyn. Walter Sr. was a master carpenter and engaged in building houses. There were nine children in all; at […]
Medicine

A real-life hospital drama

Review by bookpagedev

In journalist Julie Salamon’s Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids, you won’t find interns and residents incessantly worrying over their love lives while treating patients suffering from horrific accidents and outrageously unbelievable situations. Instead, you’ll find real-life, day-to-day drama, big and small, with a huge staff (6,210) of doctors, nurses, administrators and others playing their parts.

The hospital in question is Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, Brooklyn, a major hospital that for many years served a neighborhood of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. More recently, however, the area has become increasingly multicultural, with no less than 67 languages spoken by the hospital’s staff and patients. This proved irresistible to Salamon (The Devil’s Candy, The Christmas Tree), who spent a year at Maimonides, talking to everyone, seemingly, who passed through. Her thorough and thoughtful research pays off in the broad, yet detailed strokes she paints of the complex relationships, financial constraints, and medical mysteries and miracles inside.

Salamon guides us through a broad cast of characters in an organized way, beginning with a helpful list of them all. She paints well-rounded portraits of everyone, including, for example, Mr. Zen, an illegal immigrant with cancer who doesn’t want to leave the hospital because he has nowhere else to go. We meet a first-year, surf-loving resident named David, a Nebraskan full of wonder, and, of course, exhaustion. And there is hospital president and CEO Pam Brier, who just before taking over the reins was in a car accident that almost killed her and her husband. Her recovery and drive alone would be enough material for a book.

Hospital starts with the top executives and extends out into Borough Park, showing how the Maimonides staff strives to reach out to the community. Salamon knows how to weave a story well, and here she weaves many stories with drama and grace.

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

In journalist Julie Salamon’s Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids, you won’t find interns and residents incessantly worrying over their love lives while treating patients suffering from horrific accidents and outrageously unbelievable situations. Instead, you’ll find real-life, day-to-day drama, big and small, with a […]
NonfictionMemoir

Turning to Jane for advice

Review by Catherine Hollis

Equal parts sentimental education and literary guidebook, William Deresiewicz’s enjoyable memoir about coming of age through reading Jane Austen’s novels offers life lessons from which any reader could benefit. Discovering Austen as a callow graduate student, Deresiewicz finds himself surprised and humbled by her intelligence, and ultimately changed forever by her insight into “everything that matters.”

Emma is the tool of his conversion: Reading it for the first time, Deresiewicz finds himself bored and irritated by the endless discussions of card parties and neighborhood matters, identifying with Emma Woodhouse’s disdain for the provincial town of Highbury. But when Emma insults the scatterbrained Miss Bates at a picnic, Deresiewicz has his “a-ha” moment: Emma’s cruelty mirrors his own, and Austen knows it. Therefore, Emma’s lesson in humility must also be his own; both must learn to appreciate the “minute particulars,” those apparently trivial details that make up the fabric of real life.

With Jane Austen as his teacher, Deresiewicz learns from Pride and Prejudice that growing up is a never-ending process; from Mansfield Park that truly listening to other people’s stories is the best way to be helpful to them; and from Persuasion the importance of building a community of friends. Vignettes from Deresiewicz’s life and episodes from Austen’s biography are seamlessly interwoven with discussions of the novels, beautifully illustrating the interdependence of reading, writing and real life. Whether it is the challenge of gaining distance from his overbearing father, the temptations of friendship with wealthy, idle people or the pursuit of for-real adult love, Deresiewicz turns to Jane Austen as a wise and kind, if occasionally tart, teacher/aunt/elder. This is a fresh and appealing take on the coming-of-age memoir, pleasurably demonstrating that books really can change your life.

Deresiewicz is an award-winning literary critic and a former professor of English at Yale University. It is sure proof of his literary talent that A Jane Austen Education is so eminently readable, both substantive and entertaining. I found myself galloping through it, inspired to turn back to Jane Austen myself to see what lessons her novels have for me.

 

RELATED CONTENT
Interview with William Deresiewicz for A Jane Austen Education.

Equal parts sentimental education and literary guidebook, William Deresiewicz’s enjoyable memoir about coming of age through reading Jane Austen’s novels offers life lessons from which any reader could benefit. Discovering Austen as a callow graduate student, Deresiewicz finds himself surprised and humbled by her intelligence, and ultimately changed forever by her insight into “everything that […]
NonfictionBiography

Behind the famous ‘king of the wild frontier’

Review by Roger Bishop

One of America’s first celebrity heroes, David Crockett (as he always wrote his name) declared in his autobiography, “I stood no chance to become great in any other way than by accident.” He was born into a poor family and grew up in harsh circumstances in the back woods. As chance would have it, however, he became a mythical figure in his own lifetime, and the myth has continued to grow since his death as a martyr at the Alamo in 1836.

Crockett first became legendary for his expertise and passion as a hunter and masterful storyteller, and then later in life as a populist member of the Tennessee state legislature and the U.S. Congress. In the authoritative, fast-paced and very readable David Crockett: Lion of the West, Michael Wallis adroitly separates fact from fiction and shows us both the flawed human being who led a colorful life and the symbolic figure who represented the poor and downtrodden as well as the country’s philosophy of “Manifest Destiny” (a concept that did not have an official name until after his death).

As one of Crockett’s early hunting companions characterized him, he was “an itchy footed sort of fellow,” always ready to move on and take the next risk, without much concern for his family. His first wife died soon after they married and his second wife, Elizabeth, grew tired of her husband’s failure to keep the family out of debt and put the blame on his poor business judgment, his strong inclination to drink and his inability to cultivate any kind of spiritual life.

Of particular interest here is Wallis’ discussion of Crockett’s political career. He was a new kind of politician, a backwoodsman wanting to help people like himself who had not been able to purchase property of their own. He offered a contrast to his fellow Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, who presented himself as a populist but was really a patrician with large holdings in land, cotton, tobacco and slaves. As a legislator, Crockett was independent and frequently at odds with members of his party, a stance exemplified by his vote against Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.

Although Crockett had fought alongside Jackson in the Creek Indian War, he was one of the few men in government to oppose him. In doing so, he voted against a president from his own political party, all other members of the Tennessee congressional delegation and the vast majority of his constituents. Years later Crockett wrote that his opposition was a matter of conscience and described the bill as “oppression with a vengeance.” Some of his critics claimed that he was motivated by his escalating hatred of Jackson and the favorable attention Crockett was receiving from the Whig Party, which saw him as a possible presidential candidate. Overall, in fact, his refusal to compromise made him an ineffective legislator.

Wallis, author of acclaimed biographies such as Billy the Kid and Pretty Boy, has given readers a superb account of the real David Crockett, helping us to appreciate his place and time in American history.

One of America’s first celebrity heroes, David Crockett (as he always wrote his name) declared in his autobiography, “I stood no chance to become great in any other way than by accident.” He was born into a poor family and grew up in harsh circumstances in the back woods. As chance would have it, however, […]
NonfictionMemoir

Elegant reflections on William Styron

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

On October 31, 2006, the great novelist William Styron died, surrounded by members of his family who tried to ease his journey into the life beyond. For Alexandra Styron, his youngest daughter, this deathbed scene might just as easily have been his family’s attempt to help him write the ending to his story, a “great yarn, furiously told, urgent and grand.” In Reading My Father, Alexandra Styron offers her own riveting tale, similarly “urgent and grand,” of growing up in the ambivalently loving Styron household, in the shadow of the celebrated author of Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner.

Styron’s elegant reflections are as much a search for her father and a memorial to his life and work as they are a quest for redemption, forgiveness or closure. Following her father’s death, Styron goes to Duke University in search of his papers, especially his unfinished manuscript, titled The Way of the Warrior. William Styron had intended this World War II story to explore his own ambivalence about the glory and honor associated with patriotic service, raising questions about the Vietnam conflict in much the same way that The Confessions of Nat Turner raised questions about civil rights. He put aside the manuscript, however, after he awoke from a powerful dream about a woman, a Holocaust survivor, whom he had met in Brooklyn as a young man. Very quickly he began work on Sophie’s Choice and set aside The Way of the Warrior.

This unfinished manuscript acts as Alexandra’s madeleine, leading her into extended reflections on her relationship to her father and the celebrated family in which she grew up. She remembers that dinners at her house were magical affairs with guests from Philip Roth and Arthur Miller to Mike Nichols and Leonard Bernstein. She recalls her father’s deep slide into depression and her early bewilderment at his mood swings. After 1985, and his own chronicle of his depression, Darkness Visible, William Styron found himself sinking further and further into a depression from which he would never recover.

Alexandra Styron’s electrifying memoir reveals her father’s heroic struggles with the black dog of depression, but it also offers us a glimpse of the ways that his daughter so ably mitigated her father’s illness in her own days with him.

On October 31, 2006, the great novelist William Styron died, surrounded by members of his family who tried to ease his journey into the life beyond. For Alexandra Styron, his youngest daughter, this deathbed scene might just as easily have been his family’s attempt to help him write the ending to his story, a “great […]

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