Just the book for students of the human mind as well as geography and travel buffs.
A scientifically rich look at how humans manage to get around in the world.
The ability of the human species to construct and file away mental maps of the world, writes former New Scientist senior editor Bond, allowed our highly social kind to find its way out of Africa, spread all over the world, and establish and maintain contacts and trade with faraway populations in a comparatively short amount of time. Those whose business it is to know many ways of getting around—taxi drivers, say, famously those negotiating the fabulously illogical plan of London—have more “gray matter” and better developed hypothalamuses than those who stay at home. On that note, adds the author, we are creating whole generations of geographically stunted children by not giving them room to roam and opportunities to get lost. “Free play,” he writes, “makes us less likely to suffer from spatial anxiety and more proficient in wayfinding,” and one of the crueler aspects of dementia disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease is their way of robbing victims of their sense of where they are in the world. Bond consults psychologists, neuroscientists, geographers, and other specialists in building his narrative of our kind’s devotion to “learning about the space around us and how we fit into it.” M.R. O’Connor’s standout 2019 book Wayfinding covers much of the same ground, but Bond offers a solid contribution that complements rather than competes with its predecessor. Of particular interest is Bond’s look at gender differentiation in how people perceive the world. Men, he writes, are likelier to use cardinal directions and distances in describing a route; conversely, “ask a woman and you’re more likely to get a rich description of the things you’ll pass along the way.”
Just the book for students of the human mind as well as geography and travel buffs.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-24457-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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