FIXING FAIRNESS: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All, well worth the short read

FIXING FAIRNESS: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All
LILY ZHENG
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: DEI needs a reset. Discover how to achieve real social change in the workplace that puts everyone ahead through the groundbreaking FAIR framework.

The demand for inclusive workplaces is stronger than ever, with most employees seeking a sense of belonging and fairness at work. Yet traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies have faced backlash and stagnation, leaving organizations at a crossroads.

Where common DEI initiatives have failed, this book instead offers a results-based, systems-focused, all-inclusive, and universally beneficial framework to help bring about real social change in the workplace. This can be achieved through the FAIR framework:

Fairness—Promote equitable treatment by addressing systemic barriers and ensuring transparent, just practices for all.

Access—Expand opportunities by removing obstacles and creating pathways for underserved and underrepresented groups.

Inclusion—Foster a sense of belonging where diverse voices are valued, heard, and integrated into decision-making.

Representation—Reflect the diversity of society at all levels, ensuring visibility and participation across demographics.

This book isn’t about the next acronym or rebranding; it’s a call to action for a more effective and resilient approach to social progress. The DEI industrial complex failed to make real change through unchecked growth and performative practices, and far-right antagonists only offer regressive “solutions.” With clarity, urgency, and practicality, Fixing Fairness offers a third option and charts a path forward for those committed to creating better outcomes for all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tight, compact, and rooted in the author's entire career's-worth of research and—more importantly—practice.

What I appreciated most was Author Zheng's ability to restate points without making me feel I was being given cold leftover oatmel, lumps and all; it is down to the approachable style of their writing. (Author Zheng uses they/them pronouns.) It's clear, from high-powered venues supporting their work with publications and endorsements...this was on Forbes's Best New 2026 Books On Workplace Inclusion And The Future Of DEI list and Author Zheng's work has appeared there, in the New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. Links are all on their website here.

A key realization in this read came from the not-subtle calling-out of the fabrication of noise and chaos surrounding the efforts, flawed and half-hearted as they were, to set up DEI initiatives, by hostile sources supporting an antiquated and no longer prevalent societal paradigm. It's a lot to pack into barely over 160pp. Author Zheng manages! There are notes, and all of them I tested, around half, link to vaild and apparently reputable venues. None were, for example, to weird little fringe outlets...except maybe directorsandboards.com, because what tinier fringe group is there than that...and perhaps tellingly, the author cited on that site was Ted Kennedy, Jr.

I don't think most general readers will care too much about the subject discussed here. It's too bad. After reading this book I understand the opponents of DEI much better, and disapprove of them and their actions even more...plus I've picked up some techniques for opposing their rhetoric effectively. I encourage y'all to go to Author Zheng's website, linked above, to see what their work is all about. Even if your budget is tight, you can always request your library get a copy. These ideas deserve room in your head, your awareness, and your actions.

TEQUILA: A Story of Success, Love & Violence, a story of family, business, and love

TEQUILA: A Story of Success, Love & Violence
TIM REUBEN
Meridian Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Tequila is the gripping saga of three generations of the Ramirez family. From Sotero Ramirez's humble beginnings to his struggle for success, he and his family must overcome a harsh environment plus the frequent deadly encounters with Mexican drug cartels.

Still, the family's tequila business blossoms into a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate, and his granddaughter Maria is chosen to manage the company, which relocates from Mexico to downtown Manhattan. But she is plagued by the peccadillos of her L.A.-based brother Tomaso, and the evil scheming of her other brother, Miami-based Miguel, who bring their family business to the brink of ruin and even threaten the lives of Maria and the adversary she falls in love with, Los Angeles lawyer Brian Youngman.

This fascinating intrigue spans the globe, from the farms of Tequila, Mexico, to the skyscrapers of New York, from bayside mansions in Miami to law courts in Los Angeles, jet-setting to the Cayman Islands, the moors of Scotland, Jamaica's beaches, and financial centers in Paris. The story unfolds in unpredictable and at times tragic ways.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I did not want to like this story as much as I did. The prose is not excellent, nor is it incompetent; instead, it leaves little to no impression of itself after consuming it.

So why rate it this high? I got wrapped up in the many characters' intertwining lives, their very shady-but-legal wranglings as they determinedly, doggedly built a business of consequence out of an agricultural product. It's quite a fascinating feat to create a "brand" out of a commodity. We live in the time of brands, and mostly we're not examining the ide behind them.

Tim Reuben examines that feat, using as his lens the drive of a family's natural desire to make more for themselves, their people, than simply surviving on doing basic-to-existence work. I had a task to keep the dramatis personae straight. I honestly put a lot of that on Tim, because it's not always clear who's speaking...no one really has A Voice in the literary sense. Some catchphrases, but that's the sitcom version of A Voice.

Resolving María, our root-for character's, dilemma, and seeing her wrestling with the eternal "is family more important than morality?" dilemma, makes this a very worthwhile read. Do not expect to be thrilled by the writing and it becomes a much more exciting story. I just wish it was a better novel. Maybe his next one will be.

SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business...comprehensive title!

SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business
THOMAS ERIKSON
St. Martin's Essentials (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A fully revised and expanded edition of the runaway bestseller, Surrounded by Idiots—now with Text • Charts • Examples • Snark!

Master the four basic behavior types and change the way you communicate!

Do you ever think you’re the only one making any sense? Or tried to reason with your partner with disastrous results? Do long, rambling answers drive you crazy?

You are not alone. After a disastrous meeting with a highly successful entrepreneur, who was genuinely convinced he was ‘surrounded by idiots,’ communication expert and bestselling author Thomas Erikson dedicated himself to understanding how people function and why we often struggle to connect with certain personality types.

Erikson’s simple yet ground-breaking techniques will help you understand yourself better, hone communication and social skills, handle conflict with confidence, improve dynamics with your boss and team, and get the best out of the people you deal with and manage.

At a moment in time when understanding one another is more important than ever, Thomas Erikson revisits his most popular title, offering an updated and expanded edition that will make you a master of communication.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: If anyone reading this has not yet read SURROUNDED BY NARCISSISTS: How to Effectively Recognize, Avoid, and Defend Yourself Against Toxic People (and Not Lose Your Mind) I recommend you go do that.

Back so soon? Okay, here we go.

I didn't read the original version so cannot comment on whatever might be new in the presentation of the text. I can tell you it's easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to misuse. You are not going to be a mental-health professional after reading this book. I think anyone who feels frustrated and put-upon by the goofballs and simps surrounding them should go get a therapist. To be completely honest I think that anyway...go get a therapist! It will change your life for the better.

Absent that, reading this book is best done with the realization that at least a dozen people are reading it because of you. It behooves all of us to get better at communication with people not like ourselves, but from a place of non-judgmental desire to be better about our affect in this world.

I can hear y'all snickering, it's really quite rude. I already said it's best to read this (and all other books like it) in the full realization that others are reading them to detoxify your affect on them. I really mean that. Communication problems are always mutual. When you simply dislike someone you still need to be able to communicate with them to be effective in any social situation where there are other people...in other words, all of them. Talking to MAGAts or religious nuts is hard, but we all need to do it sometimes. I myownself keep interactions with them as short as possible and avoid eye contact the way an old pal of mine does with Mondays, for the same reason.

This particular iteration of the DISC / Meyers-Briggs system, using colors in place of letters, works as well as these things ever do: Not very, but useful as a quick issue-defusing technique. It's easy to internalize, comes with built-in shorthand, and can help you walk away from difficult conversations without creating more trouble.

It's not, and does not purport or pretend to be, a substitute for the hard work of therapy. Which everyone should do. But since there's no way in hell most lazy slugs will bother, and no way most people can afford it if they were willing (which they're not), and no easy way to find or know how to judge which therapist is the right one for you, we have books like this.

Use it the way he tells you to and you will do no (further) harm.

That alone is worth more than the purchase price.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION: Understanding What You Don't Want to Know, a how-to-think book

TOO MUCH INFORMATION: Understanding What You Don't Want to Know
CASS R. SUNSTEIN
MIT Press
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How much information is too much? Do we need to know how many calories are in the giant vat of popcorn that we bought on our way into the movie theater? Do we want to know if we are genetically predisposed to a certain disease? In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Sunstein argues that government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general "right to know" but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: How many times a day do you have to fill out a form of some sort? How many forms does it take for you to interact with your bank, your local government, your vendor of choice for whatever gotta-have-it you gotta have today? I know most of us don't read the Terms of Service, and even if we start to, they're written in legalese to discourage all but the most bloody-minded to give up, scroll to the bottom, and hit "I Agree" even though you're pretty sure you don't.

Autocomplete makes some forms tolerable and password managers make others easy enough to forego the usual "do I really want to sign up for this?" soul-searching. But it is all information...your information. You are your information.

Author Sunstein (Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide) was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, as well as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School; he is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. In other words, this is someone who really knows what information is used for, and has an unaralleled grasp of the costs that gathering, storing, and manipulating all this information costs at every end of the transaction.

What this book did for me was to make me think through the mindless "I Agree"-clicking I do when I am online. Service providers are required to disclose things to us for a reason, and it isn't *our* protection. Author Sunstein doesn't provide panaceas or one-size-fits-all solutions to the issue of information overload. He offers a considered, informed insider's look at how the constant demand for your information, the constant barrage of their legally-required information to you, leads to the fatigue of indifference.

This doesn't make it sound like a #Booksgiving gift. It should be one you gift yourself, but as the demand for and deluge of information grows more and more overwhelming, it's a great time to think of the consequences as we head into the presidential election cycle of 2024. Your politically active pals could use this readable, thoughtful treatment of the complex issue of how much is too much information...in or out...and how to manage, parse, and organize that information as presented to you.

Valuable information (!) for your engaged, aware friend.

SEE, SOLVE, SCALE: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success...exactly what it says, it is

SEE, SOLVE, SCALE: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success
DANNY WARSHAY
St. Martin's Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Inspired by Brown University’s beloved course—The Entrepreneurial Process—Danny Warshay’s See, Solve, Scale is a proven and paradigm-shifting method to unlocking the power of entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneurial Process, one of Brown University’s highest-rated courses, has empowered thousands of students to start their own ventures. You might assume these ventures started because the founders were born entrepreneurs. You might assume that these folks had technical or finance degrees, or worked at fancy consulting firms, or had some other specialized knowledge. Yet that isn’t the case. Entrepreneurship is not a spirit or a gift. It is a process that anyone can learn, and that anyone can use to turn a problem into a solution with impact.

In See, Solve, Scale, Danny Warshay, the creator of the Entrepreneurial Process course and founding Executive Director of Brown’s Center for Entrepreneurship, shares the same set of tools with aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. He overturns the common misconception that entrepreneurship is a hard-wired trait or the sole province of high-flying MBAs, and provides a proven method to identify consequential problems and an accessible process anyone can learn, master, and apply to solve them.

Combining real-world experience backed by surprising research-based insights, See, Solve, Scale guides the reader through forming a successful startup team and through the three steps of the process: find and validate a problem, develop an initial small-scale solution, and scale a long-term solution. It also details eleven common errors of judgment that entrepreneurs make when they rely on their intuition and provides instruction for how to avoid them.

Leveraging Warshay’s own entrepreneurship successes and his 15 years of experience teaching liberal arts students, See, Solve, Scale debunks common myths about entrepreneurship and empowers everyone, especially those who other entrepreneurship books have ignored and left behind. Its lasting message: Anyone can take a world-changing idea from conception to breakthrough entrepreneurial success.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The best, measured by their own success metrics, entrepreneurs are the same kind of people who become cultural anthropologists. They are more interested in what you have to say than in putting forth their own ideas. They are deeply curious about things, lots of things, and like asking questions designed to elicit explanations not simply answers. They like building on those explanations, fixing those unfulfilled needs, by getting the needy in contact with needed commodity.

This is a radical departure from the existing models of entrepreneurship. These focus on the item to be sold and thus focus on salesmanship, on taking A Widget and getting together the right talents and teams to make it. Think Shark Tank. It's a hit-and-miss process...it depends on selling selling selling, on creating a need where none might've been before.

Warshay says the best results come from starting at the end of the traditional process: Identifying the need that a widget satisfies. He requires his students to form teams, which is already a huge lesson in observing, asking questions, and solving issues; the teams must then identify an issue (See) that they can imagine a way to improve, to add value to (Solve), and then create a structure to both implement the solution and make it replicable for others (Scale).

So, you know what it says, now you can go do it, right? Ummm...no.

The value Warshay adds in his course at Brown University, of course, is access to his extensive knowledge base in person and the presence of other motivated and creative people on one's own level. The book is a great way to pick up many ideas, and Warshay is as generous with his experience as he is with his expertise. The case analysis of failures is as valuable as the rah-rah of support and cheerleading. (I contend it's actually more valuable, but I'm a cynical old party.) What Warshay's written version of the course has over the lived experience of it is, one: cost...a $30-ish book purchase is a lot less than a Brown University course...two: time, as in "read in your own." Some of us aren't great at sprints like a class represents. Some of us aren't able to thrive in the distracting atmosphere of competing ideas and purposes. A book is a great way to determine for one's self if a technique will work for us, our own special needs and conditions of life.

There are, inevitabaly, downsides to reading a book about a dynamic thing like developing one's innate entrepreneurial methodology. Those multivarious points of view? Distracting, perhaps; but urgently needed to avoid making the echo-chamber error. (Look at the great failures in History, eg: Napoleon, Hitler; they heard no dissent, brooked no argument; they Were Right. A faster road to failure I do not know of.) And let's not forget that other people have other social networks. The social aspect of entrepreneurship isn't to be underestimated. There need to be converts and believers to get any action from plan to performance, no matter how many or few, no matter what is needed from them or required of them.

There's a major disconnect for me in Warshay's insistence, at the very beginning of the book, that no pre-existing resources are needed for entrepreneurs to begin their journey. I contend that these social networks and the luxury of time to spend developing their skills are resources, and the glibness to sell others on a vision isn't exactly something everyone just *has*. The book does the work of developing whatever innate abilities one has a disservice by not acknowledging it as a precious resource, and one that not everyone possesses.

Since, however, the book and the course it's based on exist as a means of doing that developing, I suppose it's simply so basal to the ability to benefit from it that Warshay doesn't feel it needs belaboring.

One thing Warshay addresses (but doesn't belabor, either) is that the contents of the book can be applied within existing businesses or organizations. This strikes me as something that is supremely valuable in the post-COVID economy. One's role in an existing business might not be the same now as it was three years ago. What better moment to introduce something major and unexpected than this one? And this is the resource that can make that vague idea you've had since 1999 a reality at last.

A business doesn't need two people with the same ideas. So be the one with a new idea. Read this book, apply its precepts, and survive the layoffs. Or read this book, realize your idea is workable but can't be done while wage-slaving, and find the path to the door. It's never the wrong time to bet on yourself and your own creativity.

Parents with college undergrads or recent graduates could do a lot worse than give them a copy of this book (graduation season being close upon us); those with younger kids, high-schoolers let's say, could do worse than let them in on the way professors, later on bosses, will be looking at them and the yardsticks those seniors will use to measure them.

If there's been an employment gap in your life, this $30 might be more than you can splash out...but the library can, and will, help out there! This isn't some self-published marvy by a distinctly second-rank creator. This is a major-publisher product, well made and vetted by generations of successful and satisfied students. If it's not already on the library's acquisitions list, recommend the purchase to them. No one can know about every single book that's coming out. Who knows but what you might find yourself wreathed in glory for suggesting something that will help many.

The overall point I'm making is: Read it; try it out; and don't wait any longer to make a move to get your vision made manifest.

RICH AND POOR, Jacob Wren's new novel of class warfare and self-doubt

RICH AND POOR
JACOB WREN
Book*hug
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Who hasn't, at one time or another, considered killing a billionaire?

Following on the critical success of his novel Polyamorous Love Song (BookThug, 2014; finalist for the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of The Globe and Mail's 100 best books of 2014), Canadian writer and performer Jacob Wren picks up the mantle of the politically and economically disenfranchised in Rich and Poor--the story of a middle-class, immigrant pianist who has fallen on hard times, and now finds himself washing dishes to make ends meet.

Wren capably balances personal reflections with real-time political events, as his protagonist awakens to the possibility of a solution to his troubles and begins to formulate a plan of attack, in which the only answer is to get rid of "the 1%."

Rich and Poor is rare work of literary fiction that cuts into the psychology of politics in ways that are off-kilter, unexpected, and unnerving. In drawing comparisons to fiction that focuses on "the personal as political" (including Chris Kraus's Summer of Hate and Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives), Rich and Poor is a compelling, fast-paced, and energizing read for adventure-seeking, politically active and/or interested readers who rowdily question their position among "the 99%."

My Review: Since I'm perfectly in sympathy with this book's political stance, I'll start my delighted review with the mission statement of the wannabe killer of a billionaire, whose only name throughout the book is "2":

On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don't want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don't want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.

It's the voice of a desperately radicalized man, fallen from the heights of lauded piano virtuoso to the depths of restaurant dishwasher, an under-the-table cash job. He's used this void-of-brain-stimulation time to meditate upon the class system, the wealth gap between rich and poor, and what he can do to redress the imbalance that we all see every day. He elects to kill a famous, or infamous depending on your politics and economics, billionaire. It will be his life's purpose. Lucky for him he has nothing else to occupy his mind.

And the billionaire, called throughout the book by the simple numeral "1," he has a tale to tell as well. His ruminations on himself, his position in society and the economic nature of the society we've built, are fascinating:

Capitalism is not the simple desire to make a profit. Capitalism is the fantasy that growth can continue at a consistent rate indefinitely. When a child is young, it cannot yet imagine being an adult, so it thinks it will keep on growing forever. The fantasy that you can grow forever is exhilarating, one of the many aspects that make children seem so alive. We live in fantasy, all of us, all of the time, to a greater or lesser extent.

So it's clear that, unlike the expected attitude of blind entitlement, 1 is a clear-sighted and fundamentally honest observer of the world. He recognizes the Ponzi scheme that is the Growth Myth. It makes 2's desire to kill him a little more problematic from the get-go. 2 doesn't know 1, and I couldn't help wondering what would happen when they necessarily met each other. Would the murder plot get sent to File 13?

Certainly that isn't 1's focus. I don't see any evidence that 1 recognizes that 2 is a real human being, just a meat puppet standing in for all of Them:

I don't really have any positive vision of the future, don't know what kind of world I'd someday like to live in or if it's even possible to achieve something better than this. I only know that the billionaires are attacking us, again and again taking measures that serve no other purpose than to increase their own wealth and debase all other aspects of life. And when you are attacked you must fight back, in whatever way you can.

No vision of a better world? No sense that bettering the place he lives will result from killing the Evil Billionaire? I began to feel my empathy for 2 drop, having started out quite high. I can't see killing for the sake of sending a message as a justifiable motive. Taking a human life is a very serious step. In service of a better world coming into being, within a purposeful plan of larger action, okay. Maybe okay. A little bit less heinous a crime.

The next thing I know, nasty evil billionaire 1 is yet more humanized by his ruminations on the nature of friendship, in the context of losing his one and only, therefore best, friend in a corporate war:

Friendship is a strange idea, difficult to quantify and, at times, even more difficult to maintain. Clearly a friend is someone you enjoy spending time with. However, a friend is also someone you continue to support even during periods when they are considerably less pleasurable to be around. The loyalty of friendship often contains a kind of tautology or feedback loop: the longer you are friends the more loyal you become, and the more loyal you become the longer you remain friends.

A man who has hung his best friend out to dry has the gall to think he understands friendship, let alone loyalty. We're seeing only what the characters show us, naturally, but this seems a bit rich from someone who was beginning to feel more self-aware and human than his would-be killer.

While 2 is seeking ways to get closer to 1, close enough to do him in, he runs into obstacles but also has a stroke of amazing luck: He meets 1's erstwhile best friend, Emmett, a virtuoso of the corporate battlefield who has neutralized many a threat for 1 before everything went south. All 2 has to do upon meeting Emmett is offer a willing ear for his troubles:

He tells me he can't believe how bitter he has become, how sour, that all his life he had been one of the most fun, one of the happiest, one of the most joyous people anyone knew, and now he was like a crumpled piece of steel covered in rust. The way he describes himself, a 'crumpled piece of steel covered in rust,' I don't think I'll ever forget those precise words or his voice as he said them.

And back to 2 being the better man, since 1 could so abuse his best friend Emmett as to cause him to feel this caustic outraged rejection. The fact that 1 did this amid a perfect storm of business disasters that Emmett was instrumental in guiding their business through makes 1's callousness more terrible, and to Emmett more painful. I can certainly see why. But the saying "all's fair in love and war" has endured for a reason. Like a game of chess, people are pieces to be sacrificed in pursuit of the goal of the moment, at least for poorer players. A longer term vision might not have allowed 1 to cast aside a loyal friend; or perhaps not. No way to know.

But what I love most about this book is that I wondered about such things. I was fully involved in the characters' inner lives as they were revealed to me. Their thoughts and actions came to seem so real, so fully realized were their internal struggles and inconsistencies, that I was completely absorbed in the story from beginning to end. It's a wonderful feeling to get that pulled in by a novel. The author's axe was indeed being loudly ground. That didn't prevent him from making both characters very sympathetic, each in his own way. One man who has nothing left to lose decides to kill another man who fears he is losing the capacity to shock and awe friend and foe alike. His reaction to the attempt by 2 to murder him is extremely telling:

I want to give a name to my would-be killer. What should I call him? Something that will ease his presence in my mind, make him look foolish, like he is of no threat and never was, which is in fact the truth. I don't want his real name, which is meaningless to me, but instead something I control, something I own, some way to own that piano-idiot who attacked me.

That's pretty clear. "I must control and own my surroundings" isn't a thought that occurs to a man who, simply by virtue of being in a place in company, just does own it. This side of 1 is a bit sad. He's not the lion he was, he sees the end of his life's work and his life for the first time:

I go to the shelf and pick out a few poetry books to take with me. A few old favorites and a few I haven't gotten to yet. As I slip the books into my carry-on, it occurs to me that there really are a lot of poems about death, that I've always read many poems about dying, but had almost never noticed them before. They were always the ones I lightly skimmed, and I thought that maybe I could start reading these poems more carefully. It was almost nothing, but it was also a decision about my life.

Sic transit gloria mundi. His will can't help but fail soon. That dreaded pasture is ever closer.

But 2, after his failed attempt at murder, is hustled out of the city where both men live since 1 doesn't want any kind of public noise made about the bungled attempt. He travels, all unconscious, back to the land he came from, where illegal migrant workers make cheap food possible for the hungry rich to eat. He's revealing to the reader how far he's come but how deep his roots are in that soil. He begins to play piano again as he tries to think through a plan of action to help the migrants, his original people, be treated fairly by management. The tunes he plays aren't the fancy classical things that brought him fame once, but the humble folk songs he grew up hearing.

In the end, 1 and 2 face off, thanks to the somewhat grudging help of Emmett, across a field of farm laborers who are committed to winning a union for themselves. It is 2 who worries about what the future holds, since 1 is lost to thoughts of something he won't see:

If we make a union in these fields, is there anything we can do to ensure it doesn't become corrupt? Or that later it doesn't only look after the people who work here, we just look after our own, and everyone else can fend for themselves? We need to fight for ourselves, here and now, but we also need changes so large and impossible they encompass the entire world.

Though he has lost the will to see into the future, 1 isn't lying to himself. He's still very clear-sighted and unafraid to look in the mirror:

What are the clichés that accurately reflect me, that me and my class of assholes seem to say over and over again, like super-elite broken records. That the poor are lazy, that we work harder than everyone else and deserve every penny we make (in my particular case, this happens to be true), that we are the global class and therefore effortlessly, with great skill and determination, run the world.

Yes, it's a cliché; but as 1 admits, it does describe himself and his people with fairness and accuracy. There's always a reason clichés become clichés.

After 180pp spent in the company of two broken, flawed men, I emerged from my reading feeling pretty darn good about myself and my situation. And nobody rock my boat! Swimming in Denial isn't something I want to do.

ALL I KNOW ABOUT MANAGEMENT I LEARNED FROM MY DOG, a concise guide to business life

ALL I KNOW ABOUT MANAGEMENT I LEARNED FROM MY DOG
MARTIN P. LEVIN
Skyhorse Publishing
$19.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When 91-year-old legendary management guru Martin Levin decided to adopt a dog by the name of Angel, he thought he was in for an interesting experience, yet not a challenging one. It didn’t take long for him to learn that he was wrong. Very wrong. Following one of the guiding mantras of his life to never stop learning, Levin found that each day with his dog brought new insights. Through interacting with Angel, he began to recall some personal adventures that added to this insight. And as it turned out, his journey led him toward realizing the Four Golden Rules of Management:

Rule 1: Trust and Leadership
Rule 2: Communication
Rule 3: Problem Solving and Decision Making
Rule 4: Perseverance

In the end, Levin found that his Four Golden Rules of Management were so simple that even Angel understood them. Thus, if a manager can develop trust, it will lead to corporate excellence, provided he or she is able to communicate effectively, make the right strategic decisions, and, above all, persevere. Levin’s book is one to entertain, inspire, and educate business executives (and dog lovers).

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER IN A TWITTER GIVEAWAY

My Review: Martin Levin lost his wife of sixty-eight years, so he went and got a dog. The dog needed to be coaxed into a relationship with him, as she had been abused by a man before coming to a local shelter. Levin's seventy-plus years of business acumen got a sharp workout in the process of leading his dog Angel into her new life as his Service Dog.

Okay, them's the bones. The meat is, do you love dogs, and do you like Levin's personable, guy-in-the-next booth personality? You know the answer to the first one already, but let me tell you about the ninety-something Mr. Levin: If you don't like him, I doubt seriously you have a sense of humor.

Levin takes his cogent and credible four maxims lightly, telling stories on himself and his late-life love Angel the dog that relate to the facets of his principles. These stories are amusing, in that way that the modest and elderly raconteur learns is going to keep his audience attentive. No belly laughs (well, one if you're willing to be a little mean-spirited, involving a wheelchair) but a sense that the man regaling you is entertaining you on more than one level.

I'm compelled by my curmudgeonly perfectionism to complain about the use of the possessive for the plural, the strange comma usage...not in places it would help clarity, used in places not necessary...and other punctuation foibles, and some deeply picky referential infelicities (eg, short story titles are enclosed in quotation marks, not italicized). I noticed them, and even winced a bit, but kept reading.

It's impossible to live a full and rich life for over ninety years and not come away from it with many a story, and luckily Levin has shared a few of his choice ones in a brief, informative, and very useful package. I'd say it's most useful to an entrepreneur with a young business, or a post-entry-level management candidate.

FANDEMONIUM, a satire with serious bite

FANDEMONIUM
RICK SCHINDLER
Wattle Publishing
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Fandemonium by Rick Schindler uses the colorful world of comics and fantasy as a microcosm and metaphor for media consolidation and the excesses of global mass culture. It is at once a hilarious satire of business and society, a portrait of an artist no longer young, and a sometimes poignant look at a universal challenge: to grow up, face the world, and put away childish things.

Ray Sirico used to have it all. Once, he was the brilliant and outrageous Clown Prince of Comics, who reinvented the venerable superhero Skylord, and ranted and rollicked everywhere from TV talk shows to Hollywood premieres.

But that was in the ’70s and ’80s. Now it’s 1993, and Sirico is a drunken has-been. His wife has left him, his movie flopped, and his comics’ publisher is doing so poorly that its new corporate parent has come up with a radical marketing stunt: the Death of Skylord.

Still, Sirico has one last chance to recapture the limelight: Fandemonium, the nation’s biggest fantasy convention. But others are coming to the con too: Harmony Storm, the sex-crazed actress who broke up Ray’s marriage; his former collaborator Tad Carlyle, who now has his own company, and a troubled relationship; Fred D’Auria, a fanboy fleeing adolescent traumas, and corporate conspirators who are plotting to sacrifice Sirico’s greatest creation for motives deeper than even his fevered imagination could conceive.

The publisher offered this book to me hoping for a kind, but asking for an honest, review

My Review: The author's bio says he has 11,000 comic books and a wife. I thought that having one of those things precluded the other. *rimshot*

I'm not a comic book person, and I'm not always sure that satire is a good choice for a whole novel. I'm cynical about fandoms in general. And first novelists are well advised to don protective gear when presenting me with their darlings, as my spleen needs regular venting.

And here I am giving this book over three stars. Will wonders never cease.

I like the novel, hate the characters, and want to shake the writer. The novel is presented in chapters that read like panels in a comic book, interspersed with screenplay bits, transcripts, etc etc. It makes the tedious trudge through the heads and lives of Harm (short for Harmony, and a good nickname for her it is) the horrid harridan, hefty humpster Ray the nebbishy loser, Taffy Poppenberg (how I **ADORE** minor non-character Taffy!) the news lady, so much less onerous. I don't get bogged down in any one PoV for long enough to lose steam. And besides I'm an old Moby-Dick fan, and this technique was superbly used in that book. Set up happy memory resonances for me. (We will NOT be discussing Tristram Shandy thenkewveddymahch.)

The characters are all well known to any follower of pop culture, business culture, or geekdom. As San Diego Comic Con has attained mainstream visibility, geekdom is less and less what it once was, a ghetto for off-kilter fen to celebrate their abnormality safely. I, an oldster without an anime-worshipping bone in my body, know what a furry is, and follow Sailor Moon refs. This is proof that there are no more hiding places for geekdom. The novel doesn't break any new ground limning the characters. It also doesn't miss a single trick damning them. I'm simultaneously aware that I'm being herded into a set of responses and reactions by the character choice and situational comedy, and amused by all the above. I'm outside the story and experiencing my responses as reactions, but then again that's the way satire works in my experience.

I do very deeply want to shake Rick Schindler. What are you doing here?! Why the hell is this book set in 1993?! To avoid the Internet? Yes yes, I was around for the comic-book publishing debacles of the era...I met the guy who started Broadway Comics...and you know what? 1993 wasn't integral to the stories you've chosen to tell and your points are still valid today, which is a damned good thing because nothing on this earth is duller than obsolete satire. Also, dig deeper! Many situations, most notably Sirico the Stout's disintegration, could have been more keenly pointedly stabbed into the reader's heart. It's possible to do this and maintain humor, see Candide for Cunégonde's marriage to Candide. (I refuse to spoiler-tag a 250-year-old book's plot points.) And not least: Really? C'mon. Really?

All that said, all my grumbles aside, there is much to take pleasure in presented here. The quiet and unobtrusive view of fans as owners versus fans as consumers of stories and characters is very relevant to today's world. The vicious and back-stabby corporate culture that exists is never a bad choice of target for skewering. The book is, in the end, about the experience of reading it, and that was a net positive use of my time. Considering the number of ways and times that could have turned out worse, this book deserves any and all praise it earns and gets my recommendation to read. Readers not comics geeks are especially encouraged to give it a whirl.


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