An age-specific job manual featuring compelling stories and authoritative counsel.
Inspiration and advice for job-seeking members of Generation Z.
In the first two books of her My Job series, Skees, a baby boomer, traveled the world to interview people of varying ages who worked in a wide variety of careers. In this entry, she follows a similar path, focusing on “Gen Z”—people born between 1995 and 2015—but she wisely collaborates with Yusuf, herself a Gen Zer. Together, they share stories about other Gen Zers from 22 countries and 31 states, and the text is consistently punchy and engaging. A passionate preface by 19-year-old Yusuf, for instance, sets the tone and connects with the target audience (“We might be just scooping ice cream, bussing tables or babysitting. But we have aspirations, hopes, dreams and desires”), and the prologue by Skees cites generational statistics, offers an overview of career options, and speaks to Gen Z’s consumer power. The book includes Covid-19 pandemic-related resources as well as a section on racial justice, because, as Skees notes, “Gen Z reports that the BLM [Black Lives Matter] movement is one of the most impactful events on their worldview.” The foundational first chapter offers useful factoids about the title demographic as well as snippets of conversations with Gen Zers about how they view the workplace, adapt to changing technology, set career goals, and embrace entrepreneurialism. Chapters 2 and 3, in which the authors profile scores of Gen Zers, comprise the heart of the book; the latter chapter draws on numerous other sources to highlight Gen Z “dream-job attainers.” It features some remarkable stories, including those of Kiowa Kavovit, a 7-year-old who appeared on the TV show Shark Tank and obtained a $100,000 investment for her eco-friendly adhesive bandage, and Malala Yousafzai, the famed 15-year-old educational activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize and wrote a bestselling book. Chapter 4 is chock-full of job-search advice and resources tailored to Gen Zers, including helpful tips on internships, cover letters, resumes, interviewing, and more.
An age-specific job manual featuring compelling stories and authoritative counsel.Pub Date: March 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66-290426-4
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Skees Family Foundation
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
© 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.
