A fine book for a newly hired college graduate who wants to succeed.
A thorough compendium of straightforward, sensible advice for newbies finding their way around their first office jobs.
Deitz graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 1975 and rose to some of the highest levels in law and government, including service as general counsel of the National Security Agency. So when this heavy hitter tells you to beware of casual dress on the job, you do it. It’s difficult to argue with any of the 80 or so items of workaday advice Deitz offers in this slim, well-written guidebook, which covers the essentials of successful on-the-job behavior, dress, etiquette and online activities. While Kim Beamon’s If Cubicles Could Talk (2001) focused on helping young women, Deitz’s advice is for everyone in the workplace, but unlike Steven Lyons’ similar Congratulations, Great Job! (2007), this book gets right to the point and stays tightly on message. It ranges from the obvious (“Don’t whine”) to the sublime (“Study your boss carefully”); from the questionable (“Do not exercise your rights”) to the wise (“Be a team player, but take ownership of your assignments”); and from the bureaucratic (“Beware of the press”) to the savvy (“Quick drafts: Hah!”). It’s the rare college graduate, new to an office job, who won’t benefit from Deitz’s writing counsel (“However the assignment is phrased, you are being asked to prepare a complete document, with proper headings…proper format, and fully developed arguments all wrapped in stylish prose that is spell-checked and grammatically unassailable.”), and Deitz follows it up by warning readers never to rely exclusively on spell-checkers. However, there remains room for improvement; most of the author’s advice is couched in terms of what not to do, giving the book a tone of all-encompassing commandment. Readers presumably “just got hired,” so there’s little reason for this book’s two pages of resume rules—but they’re there if readers want them. The author also repeats a couple of points, which might have been avoided by stronger editorial review. But these flaws are small compared to the value of the lessons the author shares so openly, based on his extensive, high-level office experience.
A fine book for a newly hired college graduate who wants to succeed.Pub Date: March 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481944298
Page Count: 42
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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