Twenty-eight electroshock treatments were required to bring Pirsig back from the realms beyond Reason where, in hot pursuit of the nature of Quality, he “saw too much.” As a precocious student of chemistry and philosophy and later as a teacher of rhetoric, Pirsig set himself the problem of resolving the dialectical nature of Western thought on its own rational terms (the title of this book notwithstanding), and eventually found himself, strange to say, with a mind divided against itself. Now as a writer of technical manuals and an amateur mechanic, he is trying to heal the schism on a summer motorcycle trip with his high-strung young son who has been diagnosed as having “the beginning symptoms of mental illness.” The journal of their travels is integrated with what he calls the “Chautauqua,” a discourse on the obsessive development of the highly abstract personal philosophy that led to the author’s withdrawal from public reality. From all appearances, Quality still has the upper hand over such mundane matters as paternity – the presence of Aristotle and Plato is more strongly felt than the character of the boy, which remains shadowy. Pirsig’s arguments are as incisive and absorbing as his drastic fate would indicate, and the elements of the story hang together in a reified, disturbing autobiography of a body/mind duality incarnate.
Pub Date: April 15, 1974
ISBN: 0060839872
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1974
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
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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