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The Good Landlord

A GUIDE TO MAKING A PROFIT WHILE MAKING A DIFFERENCE

An amusing, thoughtfully written manual regarding the complex, challenging enterprise of landlording, full of enthusiasm,...

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A Boston landlord and mediation expert provides a guide for landlords who want to profit while exerting a positive influence on their communities.

Many books offer advice to landlords about how to manage rental properties. The most notable of these how-to volumes, Landlording by Leigh Robinson, now in its ninth edition, has sold more than 370,000 copies since it was published in 1975. Here, debut author Shapiro develops an entire, unique ethos that recasts the negative image of the evil, greedy landlord as an exceptionally positive role model involved in the community—helping tenants while retaining personal boundaries, providing good serviceable housing, and, of course, still making money. The author, like most other landlord authors, deals with the tortuous and sometimes-tenuous legal framework that owners and tenants use. He’s clearly thought long and hard about how enlightened, civic-minded self-interest can guide the wise landlord. The book is replete with many anecdotes that show Shapiro’s deep engagement in the business and ethics of landlording, drawing on sources as diverse as the 18th-century observer of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville, the mindfulness practitioner John Kabat-Zinn, and the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who developed the idea of the “needs hierarchy.” “Instead of treating a negotiation as a contest between enemies…try considering it as a problem to be jointly solved,” Shapiro counsels. Much of this engaging book offers powerful emotive strategies for dealing with difficult issues, but in simple, clear language, it emphasizes a central message: that making a profit as a landlord need not exclude ethics. Indeed, it asserts that proper landlording can be a fulfilling mode of providing service. The cartoons interspersed throughout the text offer little to support this important message, but overall, this book makes a significant and unique contribution that goes beyond standard landlord-tenant fare.

An amusing, thoughtfully written manual regarding the complex, challenging enterprise of landlording, full of enthusiasm, insight, and wisdom.

Pub Date: April 29, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-692-44036-0

Page Count: 284

Publisher: The Good Landlord Publishing

Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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