A unique memoir that provides a rare window into the Saudi kingdom.
A CEO chronicles how Saudi Arabia’s royal family carried out a hostile takeover of the private hospital he led.
Utgard, an American hospital executive with international experience, spent three years in Saudi Arabia, from 1998 to 2001, trying to turn around the struggling Al-Salama Hospital in Jeddah. Its owner, Sheik Khalid Bin Mahfouz, one of the world’s richest men—later rumored to have ties to Osama bin Laden—recruited Utgard through intermediaries. This foreshadowed a consistent pattern: Although holding the title of chief executive, Utgard never dealt directly with the so-called powers that be. In his debut, Utgard tells his story in clear prose and granular detail. From the outset, his assignment appears misbegotten. The board chairman never attends any meetings; a multimillion-dollar remodeling project lacks a written contract and stalls repeatedly over payment disputes; representatives from the royal family’s hospital in Riyadh enthusiastically propose a strategic partnership, then will not return phone calls; deadlines and commitments evaporate like mirages. Subterfuge and misdirection rule the day, symbolized by a euphemism Utgard uses to describe the acquisition: “reverse privatization.” Ample conflict drives the action, and Utgard sketches his characters convincingly, but their dialogue occasionally sounds unnatural since he forces into it explanatory information better left to narration. Meanwhile, the pace bogs down when storytelling yields to documenting the historical record, and detailed accounts of staff meetings and management strategies sometimes read like an academic textbook or legal deposition. On the other hand, the book is highly personal, with insightful observations about Saudi business practices, culture and geography. Utgard, an outdoor enthusiast, peppers the narrative with tales of family vacations, desert road trip and diving in the Red Sea; an entire chapter is a travelogue of places he visited on days off work. This amalgam may prove too personal for some business readers, while managerial minutiae may overwhelm general readers. However, it’s a valuable case study, particularly for anyone in hospital administration, and a broader cautionary tale about the risks of operating private enterprises where governments wield unchecked power.
A unique memoir that provides a rare window into the Saudi kingdom.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2005
ISBN: 978-1412065658
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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