Average customer rating:
- Common sense will get you just as far...
- For 88% of the population, a must read
- Fun, quick read
- Helped get me out of my shell.
- would make a good magazine article, but not a very good book.
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How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Savvy Socializing in Person and Online
Susan RoAne
Manufacturer: Collins
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What Do I Say Next?: Talking Your Way to Business and Social Success
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How to Create Your Own Luck: The You Never Know Approach to Networking, Taking Chances, and Opening Yourself to Opportunity
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RoAne's Rules: How to Make the Right Impression: Working the Room, or One-on-One,What to Say and How to Say It
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The Art of Mingling: Easy, Proven Techniques for Mastering Any Room
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How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less
ASIN: 0060957859 |
Book Description
Have you ever walked into a room full of strangers -- be it a business function, a meeting, or a cocktail party -- and felt uncomfortable? In the NEW How to Work a Room, " The Mingling Maven" Susan RoAne provides the tools and techniques for savy socializing in all situations so that you are comfortable in any room. She identifies the roadblocks that prevent us from meeting new people, developing new contacts, and establishing connections that build personal and professional relationships. Susan offers a practical remedy to overcome each roadblock. You will learn how to mix chutzpah with charm to start and end conversations smoothly, know when and how to use humor , and follow the simple rules of etiquette in an emerging manner. Incorporating a decade of feedback from hundreds of presentations, as well as the new chapters " How to Work A Virtual Room" and "How to Work the Techno Toy Room," How to Work a Room is a book that will change your life.
Customer Reviews:
Common sense will get you just as far..........2007-08-01
Most of the book contains common sense ideas for working a room, ideas in which the average person already inherently knows and will act on without reading this book. Half of the time I was busy looking up the Yiddish terms in the Glossary and the other half of the time the author is trying to sell herself (I don't have to hear that you sell out arenas five times!) and her other books. Good thing I wasn't depending on this book to get me through working a room any time soon.
For 88% of the population, a must read.......2007-04-07
If you are like me, one of the 88% of the people who say they are shy, Susan Roane's "How to Work a Room" is a good start to learning socializing skills. Without a doubt, going to a social event and working a room effectively, is a challenge for most people. But with Roane's guide, the reader learns interesting and effective techniques to turn one's shyness into someone comfortable in a social setting.
While some of this book deals with matters that are not necessarilly important, there are some valuable techniques. From being a "host" rather than a "guest" at a party, to creating appropriate introductions, there are a host of tips. One of the best sections, at least for myself, is the section on manners.... from cell phone usage, to how and what kind of jokes to tell. For the amount of times I have been at a function and thought someone was rude or acting inappropriately, it is certainly valuable... and gives hope for those of us who were expected to use proper manners.
As a how to guide, covering all topics, Susan Roane's book is excellent. There were sections that I wish she has discussed in greater detail, but I think detail was sacrificed to cover all topics. As a starting point however, for someone like myself looking to become more effective in a social setting, it is a good starting point.
One of the effective parts of the book are the summaries at the end of each chapter, highlighting the do's and donts of socializing. They are handy and useful for brushing up on the key points of the chapter. Also, at the end of the book, the The Gospel According to Roane: The Ten Commandments of Connecting (Though Shalt Prepare, Thous Shalt Attend) is probably worth copying and revisiting every so often
Be aware however, as with anything, all of her tips and ideas ultimately rely on you. No magic bullets. As she says in at the end of her book, what you are required to have in order to make you socializing work is to be courteous, be chanrming, and have some Chutzpah. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Fun, quick read.......2006-12-20
This is a great book for a confidence booster, but the truth is that it deals more or less with etiquette as opposed to strategy for improving your interpersonal communication skills. For the 5 hours that it takes to read it, the book is worth the purchase, but it offers little insight as to how to overcome shyness, garner fortitude, and make the contacts you want at receptions and events you attend.
This book is likely most valuable for people hosting receptions and mixers. RoAne offers a refresher course on how to properly introduce guests to one another, what not to say/ask/do to individuals you meet at a given event, etc. Essentially this book is a lesson in good manners which should precede any book on networking.
Helped get me out of my shell........2006-08-06
This is a good book for someone who can act on things. I was shy most of my life and worked hard to earn a degree from a good school only to fear talking to people so
I sent back to work in a factory. I did not know how to switch gears and mix in a business setting or others where I did not know people. It really hurt and I was determined to get over this. I found this book over 12 years ago and really took it to heart and figured that I would try to do some of the things the author was talking about and just kept building for there. If you can learn from book and try to act on them within reason when you do not have the answers yourself then this book might help you. I give it to my up and coming staff as part of their development if I think it will help them in social/business setting. While I still have a big shy side no one reallyknows it unless I tell them and I speak on a pretty regualr basis to various business and other groups.
would make a good magazine article, but not a very good book. .......2006-01-12
There are many pages that are just completely wasted.
Book Description
If your workplace feels like a battle zone and colleagues sometimes act like adversaries, you ore not alone. Today four generations glare at one another across the conference table, and the potential for conflict and confusion has never been greater.
- Traditionalist employees with their "heads down, onward and upward" attitude live out a work ethic shaped during the Great Depression.
- Eighty million Baby Boomers vacillate between their overwhelming need to succeed and their growing desire to slow down and enjoy life.
- Generation Xers try to prove themselves constantly yet dislike the image of being overly ambitious, disrespectful, and irreverent.
- Millennials, new to the workforce, mix savvy with social conscience and promise to further change the business landscape.
This insightful book provides hands-on methods to close the generation gaps. With effective tools to recruit, retain, motivate, and manage each generation, you can now create teamwork, not war, in today's highperformance workplace . . . where at any age, productivity is what counts.
Customer Reviews:
All Supervisors should learn this!.......2007-08-30
This has been very enlightning to look outside one's own generation. Awareness is half the battle. Excellent resource.
good info on generations in the workplace.......2006-07-14
This is probably your best bet for a book on generations in the workplace. It's not long on data, but it does apply knowledge about generations in a very useful way. It's not a deep treatment, but it gets the job done. A fairly quick read, and good if you just want to understand people of different ages in the workplace.
If you are interested in learning more about generations overall, and applying the knowledge yourself (easy to do), there's the classic (_Generations_ by Strauss & Howe, strong on theory and the overall picture, though outdated with its 1991 pub date) or the more recent _Generation Me_, with data on how the generations differ psychologically.
All Business.......2004-11-12
I found this book to be very informative and readable. The book gives a number of good insights about the different values of four generations in the workplace today. There are lots of examples and solutions to making the workplace more productive and fun. Unfortunately, the book's focus is on business, making money and working together better. Guess that's what pays the bills. I guess the insights can help in relationships throughout society but for those who are looking for answers outside of business this might be a hard read to get through.
Interesting observations........2003-02-10
"When Generations Collide" is a book that describes the clashes of the four generations with practical solutions. The book is separated into five sections:
Section I: Descriptions of the Generations
The book first describes the four generations (birth years): The Traditionalists (1900-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation Xers (1965-1980) and Millennial (1981-1999). The book also mentions the "Cusper" generation, whom are born five years into or at the end of a generation. The Cuspers are the bridge builders.
Section II: Putting the generations to work
In this section, the authors describe the generations' focus on career. In summary, Traditionalists build a legacy, Baby boomers build a stellar career, Gen X build a portable career and Millennial build parallel careers. The book describes the generation careers with explicit detail including how to reward the generations without offending the "generational culture". This section is interesting since it gives examples from companies that have built various career paths and reward programs for the four generations.
Section III: Hiring generations
In this section, the authors describe in detail how to hire generations. Since the values of the generations are different, company value propositions need to be just as various. These values are established with the help of the specific generations. The proposition should be put into action and modified as time passes. If the values do not represent the various generations then the company would have issues to retain talent.
Section IV: Retaining and managing the generations
Once you have hired the individuals the book describes, in great detail, how to manage and retain your talent using different methods of involvement. Retaining the talent needed is not easy. The book describes that it is not only up to your company but companies should learn to use their talent to keep talent. Example, part-time alumni traditionalist are helping Xers understand the longer term growth of the firm which in turn the firm will be rewarded by Xers not leaving in 6 months. As the book notes it, job changing for Traditionalist is a stigma, for Boomers is getting behind, for Xers is necessary and for Millennials is a way of life.
Section V: What's next?
This section was a six page book conclusion.
If you are thinking of issues that we deal with our bosses, parents, co-workers and others take into consideration their generation before taking action.
Have fun reading.
Not Profound but Provocative.......2002-07-03
Review of When Generations Collide
The Book's Thesis: If you work with people from other generations, you need to understand that conflicting perspectives between the generations can generate workplace conflict.
Obviously, this is an old theme. There are plenty of quotable inter-generational digs and barbs recorded in the earliest writings of antiquity.
More recently, during my youth in the tumultuous late 1960s and early '70s, we spoke openly and frequently about the "generation gap."
This perennial topic has been treated seriously by credible writers in other business books over the past decade. (I have penned a few articles on it in recent years as well.)
Of the books on this now familiar theme, this one takes a less statistical and analytical approach in favor of a more anecdotal slant on the topic.
Lancaster, a Baby Boomer, and Stillman, a Gen Xer, are business partners who write in a chatty style. They lace their broad observations about generations with illustrations derived from their own personal lives. Often, they make their point by telling stories about the conflicts between the two of them---which they blame on their age difference.
And they never miss an opportunity to remind you that they speak and give seminars on this topic. While those frequent reminders border on annoying, the authors do not seem to be indulging in crass commercialism---search all you want and you won't find information in the book about contacting the author-consultants to purchase their services.
Instead, speechmaking (and speech coaching to the likes of pop business pontificator Harvey Mackay, who penned the book's anemic Foreword) seems to define the authors' rather limited frame of reference in the business world.
As other reviewers have noted, the authors' attention to detail, facts, and rigorous analysis have taken a back seat to their breezy narrative.
In an attempt to provide statistical data on generational differences, the authors point to results from an online survey they conducted. You don't have to be a career researcher or social scientist to recognize that such surveys are comprised of small, non-random, non-representative and therefore invalid samples. That is especially true when extrapolating tiny slivers of data to reach conclusions about an entire generation representing *tens of millions* of people!
Still, these flaws notwithstanding, this engaging, readable book makes some worthwhile observations about the rather amorphous and extremely broad topic of generational strife. Despite my reservations, I found myself highlighting pithy passages and dog-earring quite a few pages.
If you can look past the authors' indulgent style and occasional gaffs and lapses, "When Generations Collide" serves as an approachable and palatable overview of potential generational friction in the workplace---and wherever people of varying ages interact.
Book Description
This introduction to leading group therapy takes an experiential approach to the discipline, and is written with the beginning group practitioner in mind.
The experiential aspect of this book reflects the needs of both the seasoned and novice counselor. The experiential approach provides beginners an opportunity to apply what they are learning to their own lives and work.
For social workers and therapists.
Customer Reviews:
good leadership makes good people.......2006-12-15
Jeffery Kottler's Book is a great insight to the background world of communication. It has a lot of information explaining the concepts of leadership especially in the group setting and how to use those concepts in the field of social work, education, group therapy, and other such service areas. As a person looking into the field of social work or education I believe the information contained in the book are things we overlook at times and forget the qualities we have as people that help us help others. Eventually each one of us will have to lead and take on the role of a leader to our pees, whether its work, school, or even at home it is nice to see areas we can improve in and areas we can change. Those the book read is not a novel the information in I can't be substituted. As a communication student, it is nice to see the subjects I'm learning in the work of others in the field of communication. It is also great to see so many different topic areas and way to make concepts of small group communication more specified and focused on an area I can possibly use in the future. Looking at this book has made me curious to look at some of Kottler's other works dealing more with social work and learning more about how I can apply these concepts in the work place. As a resource the book is a great tool to turn to and learn more about the field of communication, so if you not interested in that then it may not be the book for you. I wish it could have been less like a manual and more like a book but that's not what his purpose was and you still again a lot from it.
The most practical text.......2000-10-09
Clear presentations of what the new group counselor needs to observe, watch for, and intervene on. With the experiential homework and the practical emphasis, it is very useful for those about to begin practica or internships. I would use it with text that reviews research and basic concepts of groups in general (e.g. Forsyth's GROUP DYNAMICS). Kottler doesn't cover such key concepts as group goals and norms.
Beginning Group.......2000-07-29
This is the perfect book for the beginning group practitioner. Easy to follow and helpful for those in the mental health field.
Average customer rating:
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Bridging the Generation Gap: How to Get Radio Babies, Boomers, Gen Xers, And Gen Yers to Work Together And Achieve More
Linda Gravett , and
Robin Throckmorton
Manufacturer: Career Press
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Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work
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Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership))
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Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace
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Connecting Generations
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Boomers, X-ers, and Other Strangers: Understanding/Generational Differences/Divide Us
ASIN: 156414898X |
Book Description
Miscommunication… Employee conflict… Work ethic debates… Loyalty issues… Varying wants and needs…
If you are a manager, human resources professional, or business owner, you are faced with these types of issues every day. But why?
Because currently, there are five generations in the workplace: Radio Babies (born during 1930-1945); Baby Boomers (1946-1964); Generation X (1965-1976); Generation Y (1977-1991); even some Millennials (1991 and later). Each of them has a different perspective, based on their upbringing and daily lives. The key to making encounters between the generations successful is learning to understand the point of view of each generation and respect their differences.
The individuals and organizations that do this will be the ones to succeed. This book will show you how.
Authors Gravett and Throckmorton take a dynamic approach to the situation by writing in two distinct voices—as a Baby Boomer and a Gen-Xer—using a "point-counterpoint" approach to identify differences and similarities across generations.
They share hands-on experiences, real-life cases, recommended solutions, and ground-breaking research on how members of any generation can better relate to minimize conflict, miscommunication, and wasted energy. You will learn what each generation thinks of the others and how each wishes the others viewed it.
Bridging the Generation Gap is filled with strategies and solutions you can implement immediately to help build your own bridge between the generations.
Amazon.com
In honor of the United Nations-sponsored International Year of the Family in 1994, award-winning photojournalist Peter Menzel brought together 16 of the world's leading photographers to create a visual portrait of life in 30 nations. Material World tackles its wide subject by zooming in, allowing one household to represent an entire nation. Photographers spent one week living with a "statistically average" family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a "big picture" shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods.
The book provides sidebars offering statistics and a brief history for each country, as well as personal notes from the photographers about their experiences. But it is the "big pictures" that tell most of the story. In one, a British family pauses before a meal of tea and crumpets under a cloudy sky. In another, wary Bosnians sit beside mattresses used as sniper barricades. A Malian family composed of a husband, his two wives, and their children rests before a few cooking and washing implements in golden afternoon light. Material World is a lesson in economics and geography, reminding us of the world's inequities, but also of humanity's common threads. An engrossing, enlightening book. --Maria Dolan
Book Description
We are witnessing the emergence of a unified world economy, as exemplified by NAFTA and GATT, that will, in theory, make goods available at cheaper prices, create new jobs throughout the world, raise standards of living, and benefit the average family. However, population growth and resource exploitation will also affect these potential benefits as patterns of consumption change. In stunning photographs and text, Material World demonstrates the present context for the emerging global economy, what it means to be "statistically average," by displaying families in more than thirty nations outside their homes - with all their possessions in view.
Among the 350 stunning images are those of a family in lush Samoa juxtaposed with a Kuwaiti family and the two Mercedes-Benzes parked outside their desert home; a family in Iceland posing with their treasured string instruments while a family in Sarajevo huddles outside their bullet-ridden apartment. The text describes what it means to be "average" in each of thirty very dissimilar cultures and the impact of each way of life on the local environment. Statistical information about each country accompanies the photo-essays so that readers can easily compare one culture with another.
Material World is a fascinating portrait of multicultural diversity and a preview of emerging issues raised by the impact of the global economy on the cultural heritage of the human community.
Customer Reviews:
A beautiful achievement.......2007-08-30
"Material World," written during the 1990 U.N. International Year of the Family, is a major achievement and, although it can seem dated in areas, is still timely and relevant for our world today.
Profiling 30 families from across a wide spectrum of the 183 U.N. member states, "Material World" depicts these families' struggles and triumphs in words, pictures, and statistics. Many of these vignettes are uplifting--the Cuban family holding on to each other as their nation suffers through communism--and many are very saddening--the three Carballo children sleeping in fear of being robbed each night. It is highly useful in perspective building and also a good way to see how others live elsewhere in the world. It is not going to make one "proud to be an American," but it is also not an "America-bashing" book. "Material World" demonstrates very powerfully the old proverb: 'It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.'
The Albanian family, with its minute amount of belongings; the Brazilian family, struggling to survive the slums; the Mexican sisters, window shopping before getting the very special treat of an ice cream bar--all exemplify this ideal. The children are in particular very inspiring, rising as they do above the conditions many sadly live in. This is their life, their daily bread--and in a powerful example, they make the most of it.
"Material World" is inspiring, beautiful, and still timely, even over ten years after its publication.
What Blather!!.......2007-08-20
This book is an attempt to shame Americans for living in the land of plenty. So what we have more stuff than other folks do! Most of the world is hobbled by war and bad government so people have less wealth than Americans. But I'm not losing any sleep over it. The Sierra Club is a political organization and this book is just that. . . politics. Read the part about American family ... "the legacy of slavery" and the "uneven distribution of wealth". What pure hooey!
Eye-Opening View of Other Cultures.......2007-05-13
Photos showing the possessions - all of them, great and small - and daily life of families from around the world are supplemented by text and factoids backing up the photos. The purpose of this book isn't to make materialistic Americans feel guilty, but the book is certainly thought- and discussion-provoking. This book will be appreciated most by older children and adults, but even my 6-year-old "got it." Viewing a photo of the complete contents - what little there were - from the home of an Albanian family, he asked, "Where's the rest of their stuff?" Honey, that's it. And that's the point.
Life Changing!.......2007-04-20
This is one of the most meaningful books I've ever read. It changed the way that I think about the world, about my own belongings. Incredible and a must have.
A Beautiful and Important Work.......2007-03-10
The photographs that are highlighted in "Material World" reveal people and their possessions, people from many countries, rich and poor. To see how many others in the world live gives us only a glimpse of our good fortune here in the U.S. A valuable and timely book.
Book Description
Here is a completely updated edition of the best-selling Resolving Conflicts at Work. This definitive and comprehensive work provides a handy guide for resolving conflicts, miscommunications, and misunderstandings at work and outlines the authors’ eight strategies that show how the inevitable disputes and divisions in the workplace actually provide an opportunity for greater creativity, productivity, enhanced morale, and personal growth. This new edition includes current case studies that put the focus on leadership, management, and how organizations can design systems to change a culture of avoidance into a culture of creative conflict. The result is a more practical book for today’s companies and the people who work in them.
Download Description
Here is a completely updated edition of the best-selling Resolving Conflicts at Work. This definitive and comprehensive work provides a handy guide for resolving conflicts, miscommunications, and misunderstandings at work and outlines the authors eight strategies that show how the inevitable disputes and divisions in the workplace actually provide an opportunity for greater creativity, productivity, enhanced morale, and personal growth. This new edition includes current case studies that put the focus on leadership, management, and how organizations can design systems to change a culture of avoidance into a culture of creative conflict. The result is a more practical book for today's companies and the people who work in them.
Book Description
This groundbreaking exposé brings to light the surprising financial consequences of mothers going to work, and the precarious position of today's middle class.
More than two decades ago, the women's movement flung open the doors of the workplace. Although this social revolution created a firestorm of controversy, no one questioned the idea that women's involvement in the workforce was certain to improve families' financial lot. Until now.
In this brilliantly argued book, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and business consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are suffering from an unprecedented and totally unexpected economic meltdown. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but actually has less discretionary income once their fixed monthly bills are paid.
How did this happen? Warren and Tyagi provide convincing evidence that the culprit is not "overconsumption," as many critics have charged. Instead, they point to the ferocious bidding war for housing and education that has quietly engulfed America's suburbs. Stay-at-home mothers once provided a financial safety net if disaster struck; their move into the workforce has left today's families chillingly at risk. The authors show why the usual remedies-child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem, and propose a set of innovative solutions, from rate caps on credit cards to open-access public schools, to restore security to the middle class.
Customer Reviews:
Tax Ignorance.......2007-08-17
The authors lack of understanding of how federal income taxes are calculated makes all their arguments and assertions suspect. For example, they clearly do not understand the difference between marginal and average tax rates.
Good data, limited analysis.......2007-04-01
This book provides many interesting statistics on financial troubles among U.S. households. That said, I didn't necessarily agree with the authors interpretation of peoples financial problems. These authors put nearly all the blame of financil disaster on the society at large, not the individual consumer. It's the banks, gov't, big-box stores, schools, healthcare,... Although I believe all of these are a part of the puzzle, the foundation rests on a citizen (consumer) being suckered in to believing he "needs" a new car ever 5 years, a $300,000 house in the suburbs in a "safe" neighborhood, and prescription insurance for every drug that's on television.
If you do read this book, follow it with "Your Money or Your Life" by Dominguez. Perhaps the best book ever written on individual financial responsibility.
Explains with clarity, without blame.......2007-02-24
In this book, I found an explanation to a question I've often considered: when two-income families of today are raking in more money than our parents' generation, why don't we have the bank accounts to prove it? The over-consumption theories never did make sense to me, since the middle income people I know shop at Walmart, drive old cars, and still worry about the bills. The culprit, to a great extent, is housing, the book theorizes. Americans have used the additional income to create a bidding war for homes in decent school districts in the suburbs, and the authors have the statistics to prove it. Even if I can't control some recommended solutions like implementing a limited school voucher program, there were about 20 pages of tips for the individual consumer. Besides, just understanding the mechanics of the family economy has given me plenty of food for thought. And if you are looking for a step-by-step guide about gaining control of your home finances, try Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover.
Stretching Too Far For The American Dream.......2006-10-27
I believe one insightful portion of the dedication to this book sums up its thesis best:
"..dedicated to all parents who wake up with hearts thudding over the possibility that buying school shoes and Girl Scout uniforms will mean that there won't be enough left over to pay the mortgage... They travel anonymously among us, but we know them. They went to college, had kids, bought a home, played by the rules- and lost."
This is not the first time that Elizabeth Warren has sounded the alarm about stable, hard-working people going under in droves. Indeed, the contents of this book are actually a graphic, terrifying distillation of two previous books written by Prof. Warren (in collaboration with Teresa Sullivan and Jay Lawrence Westbrook) chronicling the rapidly evolving disaster of consumer bankruptcy in America. The first book, As We Forgive Our Debtors, was an outgrowth of the US Consumer Bankruptcy Project, and looked at all of the key players in consumer bankruptcy, focusing in particular on bankrupt debtors and their creditors; it was very academic in nature, which may have explained its tepid reception in the marketplace (however, I suspect the very incendiary comments and conclusions all throughout the book rankled quite a few feathers in the banking industry, and may well be the real reason the text was conspicuously ignored). The second book, The Fragile Middle Class, focused exclusively on bankrupt debtors, and looked closely at the fallout associated with consumer bankruptcy for several reference groups; it was less academic and more activist in tone, and actually preceded The Two Income Trap in sounding the alarm about US consumer bankruptcy.
The Two-Income Trap also sounds the alarm, and zeroes in on the reference group everyone would readily say is most likely NOT to go bankrupt: two-income, solidly middle-class mothers and fathers with kids and a home in the burbs. This book, much like the ones before it, dispells the prevailing myths that the bankrupt are ignorant, low-income deadbeats, unrepentant spendthrifts who take advantage of a far-too-lenient system with giddy glee, and have no control over their impulses. Instead, each book has demonstrated that the bankrupt have to have a fairly high degree of financial savvy to even consider bankruptcy, that the majority of the bankrupt are solidly middle class, that most got in over their head in a situation far beyond their control, and all are profoundly embarassed by their bankruptcy, which all of them see not only as a financial failure, but also a personal one, as well.
Yet, it is also clear to me that the spirit of activism, which was subdued in As We Forgive Our Debtors and quite forceful in The Fragile Middle Class, is not only alive and well in this book, but also very loud, and very clear; indeed, the activist tenor is quite torrential in this narrative. The authors, both women, clearly have written a book to discuss the plight of a particular reference group: middle class women, be they married, single or divorced, with children. This reference group has quickly become the single biggest cohort represented in the bankruptcy rolls. In the book, the authors go so far as to imply that women's liberation has resulted in more than a few of their sisters ending up in the poorhouse.
Having previously read Lionel Tiger's The Decline of Males, and Warren Farrell's insightful books, Why Men Are The Way They Are and The Myth of Male Power, I found the contents of this book (and the authors' aforementioned implication) most interesting. I submit that equality of the sexes has finally been achieved, albeit in a most peculiar and unorthodox way- via financial insecurity, as nowadays it apparently knows no gender difference. Though my intention is to be partially humorous, I realize that more than a few will take offense at such a comment, but my main thrust is this: what we see before us is all part of a larger plan to reinstate the New And Improved Feudalism upon the masses. Call me crazy if you like, but before you pass judgment, I strongly suggest that the intelligent, thinking individual read Robert Manning's Credit Card Nation for more insight into my claim.
For many, the pursuit of the American Dream (which many would say was a cute little myth in any event) has devolved from an honest chance at a guaranteed title shot, to little more than a gamble with one's finances resembling Russian Roullette with an interesting twist: instead of one chamber holding a live round, five chambers have live rounds. Lose a job, miss a payment, and you can kiss your house and your middle class existence goodbye.
Frankly, this game's too rich for my blood, and I think I will pass...
Insightful in some respects, off-base in others.......2006-10-15
I thought that the book had some interesting things to offer, like their information on the dramatic increase in housing costs, as it relates to public education. They also note that people aren't spending as much on "extras" as we tend to think, but rather, that families are spending more on housing and cars and such. However, the book also seems to make excuses for poor or lacking financial planning. Upon the birth of one baby, a couple suddenly "needs" a large car with four doors because the baby might eventually have a sibling? Wouldn't it make more financial sense to wait on purchasing the more expensive car if one does not currently have a need for it?
And while families may be spending the bulk of their money on the acceptable purchase of a house instead of designer handbags, the fact remains that each family tends to buy the most expensive house that their current income can afford, leaving little to no room to account for emergencies.
Book Description
The Power of Positive Confrontation is for everyone who was never taught, or never realized, that between “bully” and “wimp” is a range of behavior that is positive, dignified, and effective for dealing with life’s bothersome situations. The skills it teaches will not only improve your ability to confront others, but will also help you to live a more conflict-free life. Filled with hundreds of often entertaining real-life examples drawn from Barbara Pachter’s many years of teaching assertiveness and business etiquette, The Power of Positive Confrontation is as perceptive about people and their behavior as it is clear-headed about the strategies you need to handle yourself confidently and effectively in all confrontational situations.
Customer Reviews:
good information.......2007-05-07
this book has common sense tips for clearer, more effective communication. I recommend it.
Good constructive advice, without being too touch-feely and abstract.......2005-08-20
I like the tone of the book. Its not about self esteem etc. It provides valuable concrete techniques for dealing with conflict effectively and constructively.
Perhaps three chapter's worth of usable content.......2001-02-25
It's only natural for a popular self-help speaker with a truly great message to want to put it into book form. The Power of Positive Confrontation teaches a truly great technique for confronting others that will help everyone who has trouble standing up for him or herself. Too bad there's only about three chapter's worth of actual content in its sixteen chapters. Instead the author gets into telling us how to dress for success, how to convey the information that a friend or loved one is in the hospital, do's and don'ts of International Travel along with several chapters of warm-up before finally getting to her actual WAC technique. Don't get me wrong, I still recommend this book highly but an abridged cassette version would be a lot less painful.
Why Win-Win" Is So Much More Effective Than "Zero-Sum".......2001-01-05
With Susan Magee, Barbara Pachter carefully analyzes all of the skills anyone needs to resolve conflicts at work, home, and in life. Confrontation is inevitable. Think about it: What REALLY upsets you? How about "road rage" when someone else cuts you off, tailgates, deliberately forces you to the side of the road, etc.? Or how about "office politicians" who lie both to your face and behind your back, thrive on hurtful gossip, and in countless other ways try to advance themselves at the cost of others? Make no mistake about it: Negative Confrontation also has power.
Pachter has a specific objective in mind: To enable those to read the book to master the skills needed to resolve confrontation is positive, constructive, and beneficial ways. As indicated in the Preface, she wants each reader to be able to say "I don't feel frustrated any more..." or "In the past I would have sulked or complained until the person got the hint, now I can just say something..." or "Annoying things don't bother me as much because I know I can say something now."
The book consists of 16 chapters, ranging from "Positive Confrontation -- What It Is and How It Can Make Your Life Better" to "International Etiquette", with Chapter 16 followed by a "Final 12-Step Pep Talk." Over the course of the book, Pachter covers just about every conceivable situation in which conflict can occur at work, home, and in life. I think this book will be invaluable to individual readers as well as to senior-level executives who can use much of the material to help those whom they supervise to master the same skills.
What A Life Saver!.......1999-12-24
I've never been very good at confrontation; I always feel like I've said or done the right thing in the wrong way. This book changed that for good. Positive confrontation is something we all aspire to but rarely achieve. I've used what I learned in this book to deal with issues at work and at home -- and it works! Now I handle confrontation in the "right" way, and things work out much better both for me and for the person on the other side of the issue. This is a great book!
Book Description
Getting Divorced? Protect Yourself . . . and Your Money
"This book combines basic tax law with the practicalities of protective analysis and negotiation technique. It provides an extremely valuable `thinking man's' checklist. Women should also find the book interesting reading." -DAVID CLURMAN, PHILLIPS NIZER BENJAMIN KRIM & BALLON LLP
"This is an invaluable treatise that guides men through every `nook and cranny' of the divorce process, from the decision to split to its lifelong aftermath. I wish this book had been available twenty-five years ago when I went through my own divorce." -DAVID W. SMITH, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CORPORATE SECRETARIES
You are not alone. The statistics are startling. Close to 500f marriages end in divorce, and everyone-from your children to your spouse-will benefit from your preparation for the rough road ahead.
Divorce Rules for Men gives you hard-hitting practical advice, with numerous real-life examples, on how to save thousands of dollars on your divorce. It will give you information on finding the right attorney, filing procedures, negotiating an equitable property settlement as well as alimony or maintenance and child support, communicating with your children, and preparing for divorce court.
Authors Martin Shenkman and Michael Hamilton cover every aspect of the divorce process, including:
- What you need to know before filing for divorce
- Getting back on your feet afterward
- How to do your own divorce
- How to protect your assets
Don't go into a divorce proceeding unprepared. Divorce Rules for Men gives you all the information you need to get through the rough spots and come out ready to start a new life.
Customer Reviews:
Very helpful........2004-06-15
I found this book to be very helpful.
Customer Reviews:
Home as a technological system? It's a stretch........2007-04-02
When one thinks of industrialization, the image of a factory comes to mind. However, Cowan looks at the home as a productive venue. According to Cowan's thesis in an industrial society the work women perform as homemakers is tied to technological systems just like in a factory. Work inside or outside the home utilizes electricity, gas, or petroleum as sources of power, and manufacturing and homemaking each require the use of specialized tools.
Tools used in the home help to accomplish specific tasks but, Cowan argues, they "have a life of their own" and "set limits to our work."(9) While tools define behavior within the home, it is outside institutions (manufacturing firms, advertising agents, market researchers) that "mediate"(11) which devices are available for the woman to use in the home. For example Cowan points out that the electric refrigerator likely won out over the gas-absorption design due to the aggressiveness of electric utilities verses the more conservative gas manufacturing companies between 1920 and 1950.
Notwithstanding the use of labor savings devices, women's work has not become easier or less time consuming. Affluence and technology have made a woman's role more complicated and demanding. Partly due to circumstances such as the reduction of numbers of servants available to do drudge work in the home, the change has more to due with an innate human desire for "privacy and autonomy."(149) It is a "convention so deeply imbedded in our individual and collective consciousness that even the profound changes wrought by the twentieth century have not yet shaken it."(150)
Perhaps Cowan's best example of the effects of technology on the home is the stove. Food preparation was a cooperative effort between women and men to produce a simple one-pot meal over an open hearth in pre-industrial days. While the stove reduced the man's effort to maintain the fire, it allowed more complex meals to be prepared by the woman.
If industrialization seemingly reduces the effort necessary for a women to prepare and preserve food, make and maintain clothing, or be the health provider within the home, an entirely new role came with the advent of the automobile. The woman became the household's transportation provider!
The net effect of technology on homemaking has been to reduce drudgery but not labor. While women have become more productive in the home, what time is saved is now consumed by other tasks. In a further irony house work has helped to perpetuate the idea of homemaking as women's work thus reinforcing the stereotypical inequity between genders. However the decline in domestic servants would seem to imply greater equality between classes.
Unlike market labor, women are unpaid, work in isolated workplaces, and perform as unspecialized workers. The value of housework is difficult to quantify and critics argue that household's do not "produce" anything. But is not that the goal of industry; to produce a good or provide a service? Why does homemaking have to be seen in terms of output? What about family and childrearing? These are intangibles beyond monetary value.
Gimmie a break - just look around!.......2005-11-18
More work for mother? Gimmie a break!! This book attempts to further the fiction that it's women who are still doing the housework. While this may have been true 40 years ago, the feminization of the American male that's occurred since then makes this a thing of the past. Just look around! Men are pushing strollers, cleaning houses, cooking dinners, involved in selecting décor, PLUS doing all the "men's work" that they previously did, such as yard work, fixing the car, and doing all those other heavy and dirty jobs. To make matters worse, these are often men who work demanding jobs with lots of travel to bring in the money, often for wives that are just sitting home on their asses! When these men come home from a grinding business trip, the wife is on them to "be more involved," so you see them running around killing themselves around the house and with the kids while their wives are over at the spa or having coffee with their yenta friends. More work for Mother? The book we need is "Modern Marriage: What's in it for Father?"
A must read for moms.......2005-02-26
I thoroughly enjoyed this book which provides a lot of insight into why modern women still are spending an amazing number of hours doing housework, in spite of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers.
History with a political agenda.......2004-04-26
This book is history of housework and household technology in America. Cowan's thesis is that American women have paradoxically been required to take on more and more work as "labor-saving" technologies have been adopted. At the outset of the book, Cowan seems to state that she will show that developments in technology have not really made women's lives easier, but have served to bind women ever more tightly to the home. But by the end of the book, the message seems to be slightly different: that household technology has raised society's expectations of what women should be able to accomplish in the home, and that women must now work harder because of double duty- -doing the housework in addition to holding down fulltime jobs.
The book is organized along chronological lines, starting with pre-industrial conditions, moving on to industrialization, and finishing with the years following the Second World War. Food and laundry are two topics that receive heavy focus throughout the book. Cowan points out that in the pre-industrial times, food preparation required considerable help from men, for such things as butchering animals. But once meat was available in tins, men were released from such food preparation chores, while women's work increased, since new stove technologies made it possible for women to undertake more complicated methods of food preparation. Cowan argues that laundry duties also increased following industrialization, since when fabric was homespun, people only owned a few items of clothing that were hardly ever washed, but once cheap factory-made fabric became available, people got in the habit of changing clothes quite often, resulting in mounds of items to be laundered.
But I'm not sure I fully agree with these arguments. Cowan seems to suggest that the change from cooking over an open-hearth to cooking on a stove complicated women's lives by increasing possibilities, hence expectations and time spent on the task. Had Cowan been able to observe first-hand lunch preparations over an open-hearth during a hot summer day, she might have been more appreciative of the benefits of a stove. Anyone who has visited such reenactment museums as Plimouth Plantation in July, or even tried cooking a full meal over a campfire, comes away amazed at how women managed to deal with the heat and frustrations of cooking over an open hearth, especially when wearing long skirts that were constantly prone to catching fire from drifting into the coals or getting hit with sparks. And the health benefits of having enough clothing to allow frequent laundering are also tremendous- -memoirs of even the well-to-do of the pre-industrial age are full of descriptions of the usual louse and flea colonies that were an active part of every household. Industrialization in the areas of food preparation and laundry may have not have resulted in time savings for mother, but it certainly made it possible for her to greatly increase the health and safety of herself and her family.
Cowan notes that running a household in pre-industrial conditions involved so much work that no single person could manage it alone. That's why men got married, and why anyone who could afford to hired maids. But following industrialization, Cowan argues that maids could get better-paying factory jobs, so mother got stuck doing the work of the maids. But is this really more work for mother? If the work load was so heavy that a housewife couldn't get by without a maid, and the maid disappeared consequent with the adoption of household technology, it's not that mother was stuck spending more time than ever getting her housework done, but that the new technologies enabled her to accomplish more in the time she had available. Indeed, Cowan even cites time studies that confirm that women were spending more or less the same amount of time doing housework, but they were able to accomplish far more in that time thanks to new technologies, such as automatic washers. And the problems of the double-duty mother never even arose until technology had improved enough so that a woman could hold down an outside job as well as keep the home running.
From the outset, Cowan states that this book is about the history of American housewives and their work, so she doesn't look beyond our borders for evidence that would support or negate her thesis. Her cultural blinders seem overly tight, however, when she discusses the difficulty of finding and keeping hired help as being a peculiarly American problem. Anyone who has tried to work with hired help anywhere in the world has had similar experiences- -nobody grows up wanting to be a maid. Traditionally and worldwide, maids come from an immigrant class, migrating from rural to developed areas, if not across borders, and leaving at the first opportunity of higher pay or prestige elsewhere. Living with household help has an additional disadvantage that Cowan does not consider- -the loss of privacy for the family. Perhaps letting the family cook or laundress go meant more work for mother, but the benefits of finally getting food cooked the way you like it, and not having the maid sort through the family's dirty laundry made it all worthwhile, especially if household technology made it possible to get the chores done by yourself anyway- -and get them done right for a change!
I know that it's impossible to write history free from subjective judgments. However, I have rarely encountered a history where the political leanings of the author come through so blatantly. Although Cowan never states explicitly that she is a "Marxist-feminist", the term arises in several places in the text, suggesting a clear political affinity. Cowan came of age and wrote this book in an earlier time. Today, perhaps, conditions have changed, taking the edge off the urgency of the issues she was implicitly battling by writing this book. The factual information and the window that she provides into household material culture is fascinating, if you can free it from her political agenda and wavering argumentation.
A brilliant work!.......2003-09-21
I had sort of avoided this book because if its title--it sounded like it was going to be one of those books about how since Year One women have been shamelessly victimized by the evil patriarchy.
Boy, was I wrong! The book is a masterpiece of American social, cultural, and technological history. In a clear and sympathetic manner, it shows how home maintenance and upkeep have gradually changed in the U.S. over time. During colonial/pioneer days, everbody in a family had essential work to do: men chopped wood, plowed, and harvested; children carried wood and water; women spun, sewed, and cooked. If anybody fell down on the job, all suffered. Gradually, things changed--men (and sometimes children) increasingly left the house to work for wages during the day.
Superficially, this makes it look like, over time, American households quit being net producers of goods (grain, milk, eggs, cloth, etc.) to net consumers of finished products (pre-made clothes, canned goods, etc.). Cowan shows that this is not exactly the case. While "hard" goods did cease to be produced at home, services--health care, cooking, cleaning, etc.--were still produced for family use. And these services, in spite of in introduction of labor-saving appliances and tools--still, to this day, require both time and skill to use. In fact, while much of the drudgery (heavy lifting and water hauling, for example) was reduced, the complexity of the duties actually increased.
Cowan writes in a very clear style, and provides excellent examples to make her points. For example, she shows how diets changed with time, and gives a number of example of "failed alternatives" to private housework (co-operatives, residential hotels, etc.) Ultimately, she shows how housework/way of life evolved to the present day--working mothers, self-serve stores, few home deliveries--with the tacit consent of both the men and the women who created our current society. It provides an insightful study of many aspects of American life, addressing including such questions as "If I have so many labor- and time-saving devices, why am I so busy and tired so much of the time?"
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- Introduction to C++ for Financial Engineers: An Object-Oriented Approach (The Wiley Finance Series)
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