A vigorous look at a bygone NYC club era—and the business lessons that can be learned from it.
Neman presents a combination of New York nightlife memoir and business playbook.
In his nonfiction debut, the author blends his recollections of experiencing the New York nightlife scene of the 1990s with the event marketing lessons he learned while living and working in that “unlikely ecosystem.” Neman went on to found the event marketing company JoonBug, and although these pages chart the founding and rise of that company, they also provide tantalizing glimpses of the wild world of 1990s club life, including some of the most exclusive establishments of the time, places like Bungalow 8, Socialista, PM, and Lot 61, which became famous for their spectacular events and the bizarre “Club Kids” who drifted from one hot spot to the next (“There was nowhere else you could find this kind of diversity, chaos, and creativity. It was as though society itself had been amplified and turned in a kaleidoscope”). Neman and his partner, Ariana, experienced this world firsthand (“both of us had lived and breathed nightlife for years”) and began to start seeing its limitations—such as its exclusivity, a business model that “isn’t built with long-term gains in mind but instead is driven by ego.” As JoonBug began to garner clients and industry recognition, Neman learned how the circuit worked and began coming up with innovative ways to update it. He’s a lively, energetic storyteller with a winning rags-to-riches success story to tell, and many of the anecdotes he relates are irresistible. The insights Neman conveys will be eye-opening to readers aspiring to the event promotion lifestyle, as when he points out that the real money-move for events is to rent a cheap venue and fill it with high-paying patrons: “Exclusivity doesn’t pay the bills,” he writes, “but by catering” to “the masses, we were able to hit paydirt.”
A vigorous look at a bygone NYC club era—and the business lessons that can be learned from it.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1637556818
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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