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AHEAD OF THE CURVE

TWO YEARS AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

A discerning tour through the vaunted Hogwarts of capitalism.

What it takes to become a Master of the Universe (aka, an MBA).

Broughton, sophisticated Paris bureau chief for the London Daily Telegraph, figured he needed a change. Learning accounting might be just the thing, he thought. So he entered Harvard Business School, class of 2006. There, the naïf in matters commercial joined a student body largely composed, it seemed to him, of McKinsey alumni, military veterans and earnest Mormons. He took the dodgy but requisite personality test and assiduously devoted himself to macroeconomics, entrepreneurship, operations management, regression analysis, spread sheets, growth projections and, of course, leadership. All around him, student industrialists, pretend hedge-fund chieftains, pubescent investment bankers, acolyte venture capitalists, pretend Gordon Gekos, Rupert Murdoch wannabes and eager beavers channeling robber barons—classmates the author treats seriously and with respect—acquired the slogans, buzz words, jargon and acronyms considered de rigueur accessories to the HBS Master of Business Administration. Broughton summarizes the history of the school, first of its kind when founded in 1908. He reviews the ubiquitous case studies and depicts the learned profs and puissant guest speakers who invariably promoted a passion for challenge and leadership. A naturally proficient writer, now facile in matters financial, the author asserts that he enjoyed his two-year stint. Yet he had the faintest suspicion that the “transformational experience” HBS sold was missing something in the way of humanity. Faculty and visiting autocrats of the boardroom preached that family always came first, but these pundits and plutocrats never followed their own advice. The astute Broughton (sole member of his class without a job at graduation) reveals much about a place that caters to smart students who seek a path to wealth beyond Trumpian dreams of avarice.

A discerning tour through the vaunted Hogwarts of capitalism.

Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59420-175-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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