An occasionally hagiographic but mostly illuminating portrait in which Cook’s performance is viewed as impressive and...
A praise-filled yet also critical one-decade performance report on Apple CEO Tim Cook.
In the wake of Steve Jobs’ death in 2011, Cook’s job description seemed simple enough: Don’t try to fill Jobs’ larger-than-life shoes; just keep his vision alive while moving the Silicon Valley giant into the future on its self-perpetuating course. Naturally, the critics predicted—even desired—for the newly Cook-helmed kingdom to crumble. However, as Apple watcher Kahney (Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products, 2013, etc.) writes, “the critics were wrong. Fast forward eight years, and under Cook’s leadership, Apple has been killing it. Since Jobs died, Apple reached the ultimate milestone, becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar company….Cook’s Apple is crushing the competition in almost every way.” From a full examination of the 2016 San Bernardino fiasco, when Cook faced his greatest challenge—ultimately defying government coercion in defense of user privacy—to highly detailed before and after measures of diversity, inclusion, and environmental advances, Kahney’s book is no rags-to-riches, blow-by-blow timeline of Cook’s life. While that element is present, the volume is more a study in comparisons: Jobs was this way, here’s how Cook differs, and here are the sum effects of those differences. While Jobs cast his shadow as the innovative big-tech dynamo, Cook cuts quite the contrast as the reserved, privacy-loving believer in ethics, equality, and environment. As the author amply demonstrates, these core areas most neglected by Jobs are where Cook has been placing his biggest emphasis as he continues to evolve Apple’s corporate culture with his own stamp of personality. Calling Apple under Jobs a “Fortune 500 killing machine” in its aggressive arc to the top, Kahney stresses that “Apple under Cook is different….He is pushing Apple and the entire tech industry forward, creating an ethical transformation.”
An occasionally hagiographic but mostly illuminating portrait in which Cook’s performance is viewed as impressive and unprecedented.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53760-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
