A simple, stunning study of the power of respect to forge salutary bonds between unlikely partners. Lawrence-Lightfoot, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (I—ve Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation,1994), offers penetrating portraits of six individuals in sundry professions who share the ability to traverse social and economic barriers in reaching others. Lawrence-Lightfoot focuses not only on the extraordinary work that these people do, but on their personal backgrounds and possible motivating factors, as well. Jennifer Dohrn, a nurse-midwife, directs a Childbearing Center that she founded in New York City’s South Bronx. Determined to empower poor women who have been neglected by traditional medicine, Dohrn oversees a staff of seven midwives, along with staffers who serve as liaisons to the community. The key to Dohrn’s success is her admiration and respect for the struggling families she meets daily. And the support that she offers others helps restore her after the painful death of her activist husband, who was killed in Cape Town, South Africa. Just as Dohrn encourages the women with whom she interacts to question authority, Kay Cottle similarly challenges her middle and high school students. Willing to take risks and share personal stories with young people, Cottle successfully forges a bond with them that allows them to share their experiences and insights in return. In her respect for her students, Cottle constantly tries new approaches that “urge students to confront ideas from a variety of perspectives and appeal to a number of senses.” While most of the professionals portrayed came from educated, nurturing backgrounds, there are exceptions. Bill Wallace, an Episcopal priest, pastoral psychotherapist, and AIDS activist, attributes his caring for the disenfranchised to his having grown up in chaos within a distressed family. Replete with a bibliography entitled “Some Roots of Respect” (with source materials as diverse as Shakespeare, Buber, Kant and contemporary therapists on self-esteem), Lawrence-Lightfoot’s elegantly written study enlightens and invigorates. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7382-0093-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Perseus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
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
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