No comments about Leaders: Conversations With Irish Chief Executives.

No comments about John North Willys - Pamphlet.

No comments about Science, Politics and Business in the Work of Sir John Lubbock (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700û1945).

2 comments about Introvert to EXTROVERT.

1. Give me a break! The title is offensive. Who would want to read a book with such a title? Certainly not this introvert. Maybe one of those stripe changing zebras? I'm an introvert, I'll never be an extravert, could never be an extrovert, and would never want to be an extrovert. The author (and his editor) obviously do not understand what an introvert or an extrovert is.



2. With a title like this, yes, I would want to read it. I'm ashamed of being an introvert. Poor paying jobs where you are shoved into the back of the comapny and forgotten. All the while the extroverts with millions of job choices are making the big money. Friends don't call because you have little to say. People don't remember you when you were with them at an event or party. The title is what I want, but the book behind the cover is seriously lacking the content that I need.

No comments about Taking an Opportunity: The Story of Edmund Gibbons Ltd.

No comments about My Banker And I - A Practical Handbook For Everyone Who Has A Banking Account (1909).

1 comments about Risks and Rewards: A Memoir.

1. Recently I reread Julia Walsh's book, and found it even more exciting than the first time. Her ability to focus on what is important in life, and to overcome whatever falls her way is something for all of us to emulate. Her energy, competence and desire to share her knowledge with others shows through on every page.

   Julia entered the brokerage business at a time when it was closed to women. She focused on her goals and was accepted for her knowledge and expertise. She did not try to become one of the "men."

   In the last chapter Julia offers advice and encouragement to any woman desiring a successful career combined with a strong family life.

1 comments about Winning Ways, Vol. 2: More of the Right Stuff.

1. Like the first Winning Ways book, Winning Ways Vol. 2 More Of The Right Stuff continues the proven formula of analyzing the success stories of prominent business leaders.
   But with the second book, author Michael B. Davie has included even more success tips from those who have been there, done that and likely sold you the tee-shirt.
   In other words, he's improved on a great combination: You read the story of how someone made it big, then you read their tips for achieving success and now the book concludes with a fabulous summary of ALL the success tips in one convenient location.
   This book should be required reading for anyone serious about achieving success in business or life. Very highly recommended.

1 comments about The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up the World.

1. There have been plenty of rich eccentrics, but to my mind none match the ones who thrived in Victorian Britain. Take William Lever. In each of his houses, his bedroom was left open to the elements. The only roof, if any, was partial, and if he and his wife spent the night in rain or snow, it was just the timely clime for a good night's sleep. Sleep well he did, every night, even if he had to brush off a layer of snow upon arising. He rose very early and took a cold bath. He dined well and chewed each mouthful 32 times; like his open air sleeping, it was a health practice he recommended to others. He planned grand schemes, and never backed down on them, never changing his mind. He didn't like discussing such plans: "We won't argue: you're wrong," he would say often to his employees. An interviewer in 1905 summed him up: "Mr. Lever seldom does anything like other people." This irascible, ridiculous, and yet enlightened man died in 1925, and his company, Lever Brothers', employed 85,000 people around the world and had formed global trade and benevolent employee relations in novel ways. He deserved a biography before now, but Adam Macqueen has written a jovial and well-researched one in _The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up the World_ (Bantam), a welcome rescue from obscurity of an odd and influential mercantile prince.
   
   He was not born to commercial royalty, but to a mere grocer in north England in 1851, one of ten children. He went into his father's trade, but was a natural salesman and transformed the simple grocery into first a wholesaler and then a soap manufactory. Sunlight Soap appeared in 1886, cut into one pound blocks ready for sale, in the innovation of a brightly-colored box bearing the firm's colors and Sunlight logo. Lever advertised in innovative ways. He liked paintings, and he liked to buy a picture, say of a girl and her dogs, and change it for advertising purposes, inserting a soap bar and bath in the corner, as if the purpose of the artist was to illustrate washday. Lever felt that if he bought the painting, he need not tell the artist of his intentions to use it as advertising, nor to pay extra for it for that purpose. His great social experiment was Port Sunlight, a pastoral suburb and soap factory near Liverpool, a planned village for his workers. "It was his village, his creation, paid for by his cash, and here he could indulge his control-freakery to the full." It must be said that he was an essentially benign dictator, and that his community system worked for decades. He was far in advance of laws requiring factories to have fresh air, fire alarms, or sprinklers; he was genuinely concerned that employees get well treated, even in the mills which he established in the Congo, with schools and hospitals for the workers, an example of care that was unprecedented in that continent.
   
   There are many funny episodes in his life detailed here, including the preposterously blown-up incident of his cutting his head from a portrait of himself which he had commissioned from Augustus John but which he did not like. He had feuds with the newspapers, most famously with the _Daily Mail_ which turned on him after cancellation of an advertising contract; he won the suit against the paper and gave the damages to Liverpool University. His world was completely changed by the First World War, and he had a bizarre and expensive scheme for development of Hebridean islands that was a failure late in his life. Macqueen's account has to include the sad later years, when Lever could not adjust to his inability to control in detail his enormous empire, but his was overall a vastly successful entrepreneurial life, and one that remains influential today. Macqueen has drawn analogies with British contemporaries that may not be immediately recognizable by Americans, but his book is full of humorous detail that is easily appreciated. Lever was obsessive and dictatorial, but he was also humane and funny, and both sides are here in full.

1 comments about Iniquities of the Father: A Cicero Sensebearer Mystery.

1. INIQUITIES OF THE FATHER is a heartfelt captivating reflection of the hero Otto Kiefer dealing with the temptations, struggles and challenges presented by life in the Midwest throughout the 20th century. It shows the mistakes Otto made and lessons he learnt throughout his life from being a college graduate to being a happy grandfather. Mr. Keiper's writing style kept me the teenage reader so interested that I finished the short novel in two days.