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Golden Years

James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
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Business & Finance

Business reading for uncertain times

Review by bookpagedev

For market watchers, these are uncertain times. The market boom, so spectacular in its sunrise, has faded to pale twilight. Reassessment is the watchword at many major American companies as terms like e-commerce, e-venture and Internet-driven fade from glory. Surely those concepts will re-emerge in a short time, dusted, retooled and remodeled. In the meantime, a period of corporate reflection settles over American business. This month we look at three books and an audiotape whose ideas seem relevant for this reflective era. Beginning with a book about the Federal Reserve and how it drives the markets to an exploration of new research on customer value and marketing, each title reflects new ideas American businesses must consider as the post-New Economy world reconsiders itself.

The Fed: The Inside Story of How the World’s Most Powerful Financial Institution Drives the Markets by Martin Mayer is a powerful book written with rare insight and aptitude by a longtime business journalist. Much has been made of Alan Greenspan, and much has been attributed to his acumen as the chief of the Federal Reserve. Mayer expands that view, giving us a historical account of the Fed’s role, from the 1920s through the1970s banking regulation to the 1987 crash and into the present century. Well-cited and carefully researched, Mayer’s book warns that while Fed policy has supported the past weight and inequities of the U.

S. banking system, like Atlas holding the earth, it "may not support tomorrow’s" problems. He calls for the Fed to bring the hidden maneuverings and derivatives dealings of the markets into public view, but says, "the Fed has never believed in sunshine as a disinfectant." Historically significant and timely, The Fed is an eye-opening reminder that the future of the markets is not always in our hands.

Game, Set, Match: Winning the Negotiations Game by Henry S. Kramer describes the "game we all play." Whether we’re talking about haggling over the price of a car, the outcome of a job raise or the sale of one corporate entity to another, negotiation is a prime activity for anyone entering the marketplace. Why is it important to plan a strategy for successful negotiation? What are the legal and ethical pitfalls of managing a negotiation? Kramer, an attorney and professor of negotiations simulation classes, argues you will not "end up where you want to be" if you do not prepare to ask for and creatively negotiate for the things you want. In an uncertain era, Kramer says "commercial and labor relations transactions involve fairly large sums of money, in which even the terms won by a good negotiator in a single negotiation may well reach six or seven figures . . . A good negotiator can be a real contributor to the bottom line." Clearly written with helpful tips, Game, Set, Match defines a new watchword as businesses look at new ways to reduce costs.

ValueSpace: Winning the Battle for Market Leadership by Banwari Mittal and Jagdish N. Sheth argues that a new paradigm is emerging in marketing. While most marketing programs rely on price points in the marketplace, Mittal and Sheth show real-market examples where the 3 Ps of marketing (price, performance and personalization) combine to create what they call ValueSpace.

ValueSpace, simply put, is a whole package of values customers want when they shop among major brands, services or products. Currently, many marketing managers focus on offering the lowest price for their product to win market share. Mittal and Sheth say successful brands offer more than low prices, they also offer great performance (think of the constant Palm Pilot innovations) and great "personalization" (Microsoft Outlook is appealing because it works easily with other computer programs). At core, the authors say, ValueSpace energizes quality and innovation practices within a corporation. From Xerox to Hilton to 3M, the authors document ValueSpace initiatives at many major American companies, highlighting innovation and quality control as key company components. For innovative companies, these ideas are nothing new; for everyone else, they will be keys to the future.

Free Agent Nation by Daniel H. Pink has just been released on audiotape. Pink’s fast-forward approach to the changing nature of employment is de rigeur listening. Termed "dis-organization" men and women, the ranks of 21st century employees may well include a mom-preneur, a consultant with flexible work hours or a freelance technology guru. Talented workers don’t need company loyalty, don’t expect it and are having a great time fending for themselves in the great wide world. Read by the author, a 30-something willing to challenge the status quo, Pink describes the coming work generation to a frightened corporate hierarchy and hopes Free Agent Nation will shake up corporate America.

Briefly Noted: The Customer Revolution by Patricia Seybold highlights another future trend a return to valuing the customer. Seybold delivers a straightforward message: your current customers are the backbone of your business; get to know them and why they are important to your business. Seybold shows how to create a great customer experience, drawing examples from hundreds of innovative and customer-motivated corporations. No marketing manager should miss this book.
The Future of Leadership edited by Warren Bennis, Gretchen M. Spreitzer and Thomas G. Cummings could be just another book on leadership principles, but it isn’t. Instead, the 18 essays reflect on the role of leadership in years to come. How will our concepts of leadership change? Particularly insightful are chapters on the promise of today’s youth as leaders and an essay on why we tolerate bad leaders. Required bedside reading for future CEOs.

 

For market watchers, these are uncertain times. The market boom, so spectacular in its sunrise, has faded to pale twilight. Reassessment is the watchword at many major American companies as terms like e-commerce, e-venture and Internet-driven fade from glory. Surely those concepts will re-emerge in…

LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Staying on track At first glance it looks something like a proud parent’s “Baby Book.” But appearances can be deceiving The Cancer Patient’s Workbook: Everything You Need to Stay Organized and Informed by Joanie Willis is actually an excellent resource for the cancer patient who prefers a hands-on approach to dealing with illness. Well illustrated (it even has cartoons) and thoughtfully designed, the workbook supplies readers with information on treatments, healthful eating and more questions to ask oncology, radiation and surgery experts than one would ever think of on one’s own, not to mention a place to record the answers. Some cancer writers counsel developing a spirit of detachment and observation. The Cancer Patient’s Workbook (complete with a cover that can be removed along with any outer reference to cancer, so you can carry it anywhere) certainly offers the wherewithal to achieve some measure of objectivity. It also provides inspirational material, even jokes (unrelated to cancer) to lift the spirit. However, be warned, this workbook skips nothing! It also has sections on writing obituaries and wills, planning funerals and bequeathing one’s precious things to others. Still, the overall air of the book is hopeful, courageous and enabling and by the end even the little cartoons that seem incongruous at the start have turned into familiar icons for doing what must be done to survive trouble with grace and dignity.

Staying on track At first glance it looks something like a proud parent's "Baby Book." But appearances can be deceiving The Cancer Patient's Workbook: Everything You Need to Stay Organized and Informed by Joanie Willis is actually an excellent resource for the cancer patient who…
NonfictionArts & Culture

The Puzzler

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Puzzles are big news—and big business—these days. With their capacity to entertain, challenge and provide a distraction from the stresses of daily life, puzzles have found a wider audience than ever before.

In the introduction to his new book, The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, From Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life, journalist, bestselling author and invenerate puzzler A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All) shares the euphoria he felt upon learning that his name was featured as a clue in a New York Times crossword puzzle. He’d made it to the big time! But, alas, it was a Saturday puzzle, one of the hardest of the week. So, not a household name just yet, just an obscure clue.

However, Jacobs may find his name appearing in clues more often as puzzle lovers old and new discover this timely and entertaining exploration of why we love (and, yes, often become addicted to) all sorts of puzzles—from the word puzzle books we gobbled up in childhood, to jigsaw puzzles on card tables during family summer vacations, to the world’s recent embrace of a simple daily word game. (You know the one.)

A.J. Jacobs shares how he solved the hardest puzzle yet: motivating himself to finish writing ‘The Puzzler.’

Jacobs covers a wide variety of puzzles, including anagrams, mazes, math and logic puzzles, Rubik’s Cubes, Sudoku, riddles, ciphers and, of course, crosswords—his first love. He admits to knowing the exact time the New York Times crossword puzzle appears online each day. He’s also honest about the emotions involved in puzzle-solving. Frankly, it’s not all enjoyment; there’s frustration, drama, despair and even humiliation. “And sometimes there’s terror,” Jacobs writes, speaking of the creeping fear that getting stuck portends mental decline.

The Puzzler isn’t simply Jacobs’ personal journey, however; it’s also an exploration of the history of puzzles and their role in society. Along the way, Jacobs meets and interviews some fascinating puzzle lovers, including Jeff Varasano, who created his own algorithms to solve a Rubik’s Cube as a teenager back in 1980, and a young woman named Sydney Weaver, a “speedcuber” whose cubing has helped her with pediatric arthritis. Readers also meet crossword maker Peter Gordon, who, when asked why he thinks we’re addicted to puzzles, replied, “Well, life is a puzzle.” Indeed, as the late Maki Kaji, often known as the father of Sudoku, believed, puzzles are a journey. Jacobs’ wonderful book reminds us that puzzles help us to be present in the moment and connect with others on the same journey.

A final note: The Puzzler would make a fabulous gift as a physical copy simply because it includes original puzzles by Greg Pliska for readers to solve. But don’t despair; the answers are in the back.

Puzzle lovers old and new will be thrilled to discover this entertaining exploration of why we love (and often become addicted to) all sorts of puzzles.
NonfictionEssays

Review

Review by bookpagedev

have been tortured by some of the fanciest ear-benders in the world, including George Bernard Shaw, reporter Joseph Mitchell wrote in 1938, “and I have long since lost my ability to detect insanity. Sometimes it is necessary for me to go into a psychopathic ward on a story and I never notice the difference.” Such is the life of a journalist. The consummate listener, a gentleman reporter whose Joycean stories about the everyday people of New York are tinged with melancholy, Joseph Mitchell went to work for The New Yorker in 1938. A notoriously slow and meticulous craftsman, he wrote with lapidary skill. A collection of his New Yorker pieces, Up in the Old Hotel, was a 1992 bestseller, but when Mitchell died four years later, he left precious little work.

Now, for the first time in more than 60 years, readers can treat themselves to the reportage of Mitchell’s pre-New Yorker days with the newly reissued My Ears Are Bent, a collection of his contributions to The Herald Tribune and The World Telegram, originally published in 1938. The new, expanded edition includes articles and feature stories unavailable since they first appeared in the papers during the 1930s. Mixing with lushes and chorus girls, pickpockets and speakeasy proprietors, the latter of which proved invaluable to the reporter (“the saloonkeeper is apt to know the address or hangout of any citizen dopey enough or unlucky enough to be of interest to a great metropolitan newspaper,” he writes), Mitchell, on his beat, visited establishments like the Broken Leg and Busted Bar ∧ Grill, where he observed and interviewed the regulars. The stories that resulted are miniature noirs peopled with characters who crack wise, journalistic pieces, replete with smoke and shadows and snappy badinage, that show the city at its seediest.

Along with looks at society’s less savory members, the new edition includes talks with Jimmy Durante, jazz giant Gene Krupa and George M. Cohan blasts from the past that give the book a time-capsule appeal. Indeed, a sort of na•vete pervades the pieces overall. Some of the strippers and fan dancers featured in a chapter called “Cheese-cake” seem to have an air of wide-eyed innocence, as Mitchell himself does in their presence: “It was the first time a woman I had been sent to interview ever came into the room naked . . .,” he writes. “She didn’t even have any shoes on.” In “The Marijuana Smokers” a classic snapshot of a more innocent America, a country befuddled by the new drug Mitchell dodges bullets and crashes a Harlem rent party. Such cultural curiosities are, of course, no longer news, but they were big scoops when Mitchell snooped them out. He writes with economy in these classy, clear-eyed accounts of a time when society was a bit more civilized. No words are wasted here, and his descriptive prose is often as pure and precise and image-oriented as the poetry of William Carlos Williams. Above all, perhaps, what Mitchell’s writing reveals is the way the world in general and New York in particular have changed. Reading My Ears Are Bent, one can’t help but contrast the present with the past. The collection reflects a younger era, an age when the world had more mystery in it. They don’t write ’em like this anymore.

have been tortured by some of the fanciest ear-benders in the world, including George Bernard Shaw, reporter Joseph Mitchell wrote in 1938, "and I have long since lost my ability to detect insanity. Sometimes it is necessary for me to go into a psychopathic ward…
History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

n war, Napoleon wrote, “three-quarters turns on personal character and . . . the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.” In notable biographies of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy’s president, and John C. Breckinridge, its last secretary of war, and in dozens of other books on the Civil War, historian William C. Davis has underscored the prominence of “personal character” in shaping the Confederacy’s rise and fall.

In his engaging and well written An Honorable Defeat, Davis focuses closely on the last four months (January-April 1865) of the Confederacy’s existence. He frames the South’s defeat around the differing visions and personalities of Jefferson Davis and Breckinridge. William C. Davis knows the history of the Confederacy as well as any historian today, and his penetrating analysis of Jefferson Davis and Breckinridge provides a fresh look at their contrasting emotions, differing world views and divergent conceptions of southern honor and defeat.

Jefferson Davis was a cold, combative, distant autocrat. He meddled constantly in his generals’ affairs, gave his cabinet secretaries little authority and frittered away the Confederacy’s one economic ace in the hole “King Cotton.” Yet for all his shortcomings as president, Jefferson Davis was totally dedicated perhaps too dedicated to the southern cause. “If only Davis’ personality and temperament had been more winning,” writes William C. Davis, “and his grasp of human nature more keen . . . those who became his enemies might have forgiven him a multitude of lesser shortcomings.” In contrast to Davis, Breckinridge was flexible, balanced and popular, and the Kentuckian rose rapidly through the hierarchy of the Confederate Army to the rank of major general. “Charming and engaging, diplomatic, the least egotistical or confrontational of men,” William C. Davis explains, Breckinridge “never sought conflict, and yet even [Jefferson] Davis, so often undiscerning, saw well enough that this was a man he could not dominate.” The conflict of wills erupted in March 1865, as Union troops encircled Richmond, and the Confederacy disintegrated from within. President Davis, unwilling to accept anything short of independence and refusing to surrender, admonished white southerners to fight a guerilla war and to rally around remaining Confederate troops in Texas. Secretary of War Breckinridge disagreed, favoring an honorable, negotiated peace. “This has been a magnificent epic,” Breckinridge lectured a delegation of Confederate senators, urging them “in God’s name let it not terminate in a farce.” Though the Confederacy ultimately received a lenient peace, Davis spent two years in prison and remained “unreconstructed” long after Appomattox. Breckinridge escaped to Cuba, relocated to Canada and returned to the U.

S. in 1869. He urged southerners to accept the war’s verdict and move forward. Fortunately for America and the South, Breckinridge’s vision of Confederate defeat and Reconstruction, not Jefferson Davis’, prevailed.

John David Smith has written or edited 14 books, including Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and The American Negro (University of Georgia Press).

n war, Napoleon wrote, "three-quarters turns on personal character and . . . the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter." In notable biographies of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy's president, and John C. Breckinridge, its last secretary of war, and in…
History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

hen he moved to Washington in December, 1823, newly elected Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson was carefully scrutinized by other politicians and citizens from all walks of life. His reputation had preceded him, and he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate. His charismatic presence calm, dignified, tall, ramrod-straight stood in vivid contrast to what many had expected. He wrote to a friend, “I am told the opinion of those whose minds were prepared to see me with a Tomahawk in one hand, and a scalping knife in the other has greatly changed and I am getting on very smoothly.” Jackson was indeed best known for his military exploits, especially as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 when his ragtag forces impressively defeated the British in the War of 1812. But he also had a reputation as an Indian fighter. His most notable victory in that role had come against the Creek Nation in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.

Jackson’s personal and public lives were often controversial, particularly his complex dealings with Native Americans. In Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars, noted Jackson scholar Robert V. Remini focuses exclusively on this subject, providing a well documented, thoughtful and sensitive exploration. Remini, who won the National Book Award for his definitive three-volume biography of Jackson, assures readers that “it is not my intention to excuse or exonerate Andrew Jackson for the role he played in the removal of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River. My purpose is simply to explain what happened and why.” To begin to understand what happened, “modern Americans must first appreciate the fact that the mood and temper of Americans during Jackson’s lifetime tolerated and actually condoned removal.” The author traces the life of the boy who “learned to fear and hate Indians from an early age,” sharing the attitude of most frontier settlers. Jackson never forgot his early life in South Carolina when the British allied with Native Americans to wage war against the Americans. “In his mind, and the minds of most frontiersman, the Indians were pawns to be used by any foreign power seeking to gain dominance in North America.” Remini follows Jackson into Tennessee where he develops into “a bold and resourceful Indian fighter, thirsting for Ôencounters with savages.’ ” Jackson was an early convert to the idea, first proposed by Thomas Jefferson, that Indian removal be linked to an exchange of land. Through the years, for Jackson, the most compelling argument for this approach was national security. American settlers could better protect the country against foreign invaders than the Indians.

Remini details not only the numerous battles between Jackson’s forces and Native Americans, but also the many negotiating sessions. “He always addressed Indians as though they were children, irrespective of their age, education, or intellectual maturity.” When negotiating, Jackson never hesitated to use bribery or the threat of violence if his demands were rejected.

The author shows how Indian removal began in the early 1800s by presidential action and continued for 20 years; Congress became involved only when the Senate eventually ratified the treaties. Remini notes that “the Indian Removal Act did not remove the Indians at all. . . . What Jackson did was force the Congress to face up to the Indian issue and address it in the only way possible. And what it did at his direction was harsh, arrogant, racist and inevitable.” Remini believes Jackson can be blamed in particular for his desire to speed things up. “He lacked patience, and by his pressure to move things along quickly he caused unspeakable cruelties to innocent people who deserved better from a nation that prided itself on its commitment to justice and equality.” Remini is to be commended for his balanced study of a difficult period and the complex man at its core.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

hen he moved to Washington in December, 1823, newly elected Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson was carefully scrutinized by other politicians and citizens from all walks of life. His reputation had preceded him, and he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate. His charismatic presence calm,…

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