Time-honored advice, if not always timely.
Handy tips toward more upstanding social behavior, informed by Stoicism and history.
Holiday has developed a cottage industry popularizing Stoicism via a newsletter, store, and books like this, the latest in a series on “Stoic virtues.” Here, the author focuses on justice, with chapters stressing the importance and merits of old-fashioned verities like honesty, forgiveness, social engagement, and more. All respectable ideas, and Holiday has mastered a tone to deliver them that’s firm but compassionate, somewhere between New Age concepts and Jordan Peterson–esque moral scolding. Still, for a book purportedly rooted in the teachings of the ancients, Holiday gives surprisingly little attention to Stoic standard-bearers like Cato the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Instead, many of his examples come from the annals of the Greatest Generation, particularly President Harry S. Truman, who is presented as an underrated, rock-ribbed ethical figure. (To bolster the point, the author notes Truman’s deep admiration of Aurelius.) The parade of mid-20th-century eminences—Martha Graham, Gandhi, Clarence Darrow, Rosa Parks, Albert Schweitzer—is relevant, though it has the curious effect of making all of this justice seeking feel distant from the present moment. Stray examples of contemporary ethical leaders like NBA coach Gregg Popovich or former German chancellor Angela Merkel are exceptions that prove the rule. More interesting in some ways than Holiday’s delivery of unimpeachable examples of good behavior is an afterword about how he has managed hiccups in his business in terms of ethical sourcing, co-workers’ bad behavior, and readers resenting his engagement in politics: “It’s a test we face in a world driven by algorithms—do we tell people what they want to hear? Or do we say and do what we think needs to be done?” Fresher examples might better sell the philosophy as fit for the current moment.
Time-honored advice, if not always timely.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780593191712
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
