From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture

Book Description

A lively, extensively illustrated history of the widespread influence of Jews on American popular culture through the twentieth century.

The contribution by Jews to American popular culture is widely acknowledged yet scarcely documented. This is the first comprehensive investigation of the formative Jewish influence upon the rise and development of American popular culture, drawing upon extensive oral histories with several generations of Jewish artists, little-utilized Yiddish scholarship, and the author's own connections with today's comic-strip artists. Buhle shows how the rich legacy of Yiddish prepared would-be artists to absorb the cultures of their surrounding environments, seeing the world through the eyes of others, and producing the talent required for theater, films, television, popular music and comics.

Buhle suggests that "premodern" and "postmodern" are arbitrary designations here, because the self-reflective content has always radiated an inner Jewishness. From Sholem Aleichem (who died in the Bronx) to Gertrude Berg, Woody Allen and Tony Kushner, from John Garfield to Roseanne Barr and Rube Goldberg to Cyndi Lauper, the cutting edge is never too far from home and humane antidotes to the pains of a troubled world. Contradictions between Jewish avant-garde and kitsch, mogul and artist, orthodoxy and heresy are given new sense here in the scope of cultural output adopted by ordinary Americans as their own. Illustrated with the work of Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Ben Katchor, Trina Robbins and others, From the Lower East Side to Hollywood is full of humor and insight into the power of popular art to spark insight and encourage the endless quest for freedom. 25 b/w illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

A welcome contribution to Judaic Studies.......2004-10-12

From The Lower East Side To Hollywood: Jews In American Popular Culture is a fascinating examination and documentation of the contribution Jews have made to American popular culture. Scrutinizing the ripples of effect from prominent individuals such as Gertrude Berg, Woody Allen, Roseanne Barr, Cyndi Lauper, and many more, From The Lower East Side To Hollywood deftly combines scholarship, philosophy, and sociology into a most remarkable study of the complex fabric of modern American values and entertainment. A very highly recommended and exceptionally welcome contribution to Judaic Studies and American Culture Studies academic reference shelves and supplemental reading lists, From The Lower East Side To Hollywood will also hold immense appeal for the non-specialist general reader as well.

Paul Buhle's "From the Lower East Side"-- highly recommended.......2004-08-06

I'm 24 years old, and I thought Paul Buhle's "From the
Lower Eastside to Hollywood" was an absolute joy to
read. It not only provided a sweeping, exciting
history of the contributions of Jews and Jewishness to
the shaping of popular culture, but motivated me to
find out more about this history-- which takes on an
added fascination through Buhle's narrative.

The book dances along, weaving back and forth between
the stories of particular characters and convergences,
and the moral impulse-- egalitarian, rebellious,
transcendental-- at the core of Jewish popular
culture. I learned many new things, and new
connections and emphases were made that had a big
impact on me.

One of the most exciting parts of the
book was Buhle's description of the Lower East Side at
the turn of the century, a thriving nest of Jewish
immigrant life to where much of the roots of modern
popular culture can be traced (and where "[r]ebellion
was in the life's blood of creative purpose"). (On a
personal level, my great-grandparents lived on the
Lower East Side close to the time Buhle describes,
providing an added interest for me).

Buhle emphasizes the centrality of the Yiddish language--
and Yiddishkayt (roughly meaning "Yiddish-ness")-- in
Jewish culture and the extent to which it trickled
into and shaped broader popular culture, as well as
the egalitarian and ethical impulses which have
permeated the Jewish contribution to popular culture.
In addition to all this, Buhle explores the
(unfortunately) neglected lineage of comics-- from the
earliest Jewish satirists to MAD magazine and Harvey
Pekar-- as a particularly Jewish art form. As an added
bonus-- and a fitting one, for an author so
passionately invested in his subject-- Buhle's story
is sprinkled with touching personal anecdotes of his
own that color in the narrative with an added human
touch.

And there's much, much more. The history of Broadway
and Hollywood, for instance, are fascinatingly
re-discovered through the lens that Buhle uses to put
that history together, both inseparable from their
Jewish origins and ethos.

Buhle views popular culture, and the inescapable,
omnipresent Jewish contribution to it, as expressive
of the latent yearnings of a people for something that
transcends the doldrums of alienation and atomization.
This impulse-- of mass culture "as portending
self-healing and total democratization rather than
exhaustion of resources and an endless individual
isolation"-- runs like a thread throughout the entire
book and gives it an urgency one would not expect. I
highly recommend it.

Incoherent, intellectually lazy, self-serving drivel.......2004-07-08

This book would be a strong contender for the worst study of American Jewish culture ever written--if one could call it a study. There is no central argument, but a great deal of name-dropping; the author is not shy about telling readers of his personal associations with avant-garde cartoonists like Art Spiegelman, Ben Katchor, and Harvey Pekar. In the process, he does a great disservice to their work, which is a great shame, since such artists deserve a more insightful study that would place them more effectively in their social and cultural context.

Though it is difficult to discern any central focus here, it doesn't take long to see Buhle's maddening tendency to make facile connections between speaking Yiddish and being funny, creative, and/or left-wing. Here is one egregious example: "Whenever [Yiddish] has seemed to vanish, personal traces can be discovered, as in the life of magnum [?!?!] television producer Larry Gelbart, creator of the most popular (and antiwar) sitcom of all time, M*A*S*H, who reveals that until four, he spoke only Yiddish. Not likely a coincidence, at least not entirely." Professor Buhle, could you please fill in the blanks for us? Insinuation is no substitute for scholarship.

In short, keep your distance--or at the very least, dip into this book in a bookstore before shelling out your hard-earned money. There are many other studies of American Jewish culture worth pursuing; a handful of authors to consult instead--in no particular order--are Irving Howe, Stephen Whitfield, Jenna Joselit, J. Hoberman, Michael Alexander, Neal Gabler, Lester Friedman, and Mark Slobin.

Transforming America Through Jewish Humanism.......2004-07-06

Norma Rae, in the movie that bears her name, asked the Jewish union organizer why he was a political activist. He replied, "History," as if, as a Jew, he had no choice but to work toward creating a more humane society.

In his stunning book, Paul Buhle brilliantly analyzes the enormous contributions of the uniquely Jewish characteristic of "reflexiveness" to twentieth centruy American popular culture. This concept comes close to the two core values that educators Deborah Meier and Paul Schwarz of the Central East Secondary School in New York City contended should be taught in schools: "empathy and skepticism...the ability to see a situation from the eyes of another and the tendency to wonder about the validity of what we encountered."

These two humanistic values, empathy and skepticism, emphatically are not part of the "accepted" culture that the American educational system traditionally transmits. Instead, our schools tend to stress patriotism, obedience, and the legitimacy of the existing stratified social system.

Through their substantial influence on theater, film, music, and comics, Jewish performers have provided a totally different social construction of reality, a more humane, even oppositional imprint on popular culture. Jewish artists have utilized empathy and skepticism to transform American political values in a more progressive direction.

If Jewish artists had attemted their task in a didactic, heavy-handed manner, they undoubtedly would have been unsuccessful. Instead, the key to Jewish influence on American culture has been Jewish HUMOR. From Sholem Aleichem to Lenny Bruce, to the contomporary work of Harvey Pekar, Jewish humor has resonated with mainstream America. In this process, Jewish artists have absorbed the cultures other ethnic groups--Irish, Italian, African American--and furnished comic relief to ordinary people suffering from the trials of everyday life.

Beyond his enormous contribution to the scholarship of the history and sociology of American culture, Buhle's book is eloquently written, with great charm and humor. I come away with a much deeper understanding of individual redemption and of the way in which Jewish influence of popular American culture has effectively been an alternative, sometimes avant garde, form of socialization to the American school system.

Yiddishkayt as a key to American popular culture.......2004-06-29

Although Paul Buhle enjoys a high profile as chronicler of the American left, he is also one of our foremost scholars of Jewish popular culture. There is an obvious connection here since the two worlds tend to overlap, particularly during the period when Jews were overwhelmingly proletarian, suffering discrimination and identifying with society's underdogs.

This has little to do with organized Judaism as such but more with the general zeitgeist of the Jewish people, which Buhle describes as "Yiddishkayt" or "Jewishness." Although Buhle himself is not Jewish, he learned Yiddish as part of his PhD language requirements. This language would be essential to his studies of the roots of the American left, many of whose founding fathers wrote in this highly vernacular tongue. His engagement with Jewish culture deepened in New York City during the 1960s radicalization, when some of the elder statesmen of the left who had fled persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia recounted their past to this up and coming scholar. Anybody who passed through Union Square Park on 14th Street during this period would still be able to see clusters of mostly Italian and Jewish trade unionists arguing the fine points of anarchism or socialism.

The book follows the chronological path of Jewish popular culture as it wends its way from Vaudeville to contemporary television. Much of the pleasure of taking this grand tour is discovering the "Yiddishkayt" roots of various figures who straddle both periods. One of the most striking examples is Leonard Nimoy, who played the pointy-eared and impassive Vulcan on television's "Star Trek." Nimoy began acting as an amateur in a high school production of Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing," a classic example of Jewish radical theater. As a young professional, Nimoy started off in Los Angeles's Yiddish theater, while taking acting lessons from blacklistee and Jew Jeff Corey. Soon he began acting in avant-garde productions of plays by Genet, including "Deathwatch." In the role of a prisoner, Nimoy found "himself totally alienated from both worlds, the society outside, and the one within the prison walls," according to his 1975 memoir. It is not too much of a stretch to conceive of this as preparation for his role as the quintessential alien -- Spock. Jewishness and the avant-garde lead in unexpected directions.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Labour/Le Travail, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2005. The length of the article is 1225 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Paul Buhle, From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture.(Book Review)
Author: Ester Reiter
Publication: Labour/Le Travail (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 56 Page: 334(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

•Based on extensive family interviews and newly discovered documents

•Intriguing story of a black woman pioneer in recorded music

Dinah Washington sang pop, jazz, R&B and gospel, but most of all she sang the blues—"Maybe I'm a Fool" and "I Wanna Be Loved" and Muddy Water" and (of course) "What a Difference a Day Makes" and countless others—all in a distinctive honey-and-vinegar voice that made everything she sang unmistakably her own. Dubbed both the Queen of the Blues and Queen of the Juke Box, Dinah Washington had songs, shows, lovers, and husbands. Controversial to the critics of her time, vastly influential to the next generation of singers, Washington will always be remembered for a life that was, first and foremost, music.

Customer Reviews:

Voice as honey,busy as a Bee.......2007-07-03

Because no one has ever written about legendary Dinah Washington before (at least not published in Europe),I snatched this book immediately just to find it a bit overwhelming & too detailed.Where author dazzled in her previous book,this time she seems she wasn't sure is she writting about Washington or the whole afro-american society of post WW2 America.Sure,she had done her homework and reasearched high and low (future authors will have to rely on her) but after a while,the book turns into list of every concert performance Washington ever gave in her life,therefore a bit dry.Strange how vital and exciting singer like Washington ended up with such uninspired biographer! The little episodes,like the only time this overworked woman spent time with her family in Disneyland tell much more than all the concerts and recording dates.I love Washington dearly and thanks to her music legacy,for me she lives forever.Read the book if you are curious,but stick to the music.

Still Waiting for the Definitive Bio..........2005-01-30

Dinah Washington, like Etta James and Esther Phillips, is one of the underrated singers of the post WWII era, and very little has been written about her. So when I saw this book and who its author was,(Nadine Cohodas, who wrote a superb history of Chess Records,Spinning Blues Into Gold), I eagerly anticipated reading it.
After finishing it, unfortunately I'm still waiting for the definitive biography of the Queen. It's very apparent that Cohodas did a lot of research, but the result was turned into a laundry list of club dates, recording sessions, clothes inventories, and rotating musicians and husbands which becomes numbing. What is missing is context and interpretation of these events aside from the repetitive assertion that Washington was narrowly promoted and marketed because of race. I wasn't looking for sensationalism or psychobiography from this book, but I was hoping to gain some insight into Dinah Washington's life, or music, and the lack of analysis left me still wondering both who she was and how she created such wonderful music.

A fine insider's guide to the real Dinah.......2005-01-04

Born Ruth Lee Jones in 1924 in Alabama, singer Dinah Washington's family moved to Chicago where she became a local gospel star at fifteen - but she didn't stop there. When she was discovered by Lionel Hampton at eighteen, Dinah made her way to New York's Apollo Theatre and became a legend. Queen: The Life And Music Of Dinah Washington reviews her life and music, delving into her high and low moments alike. A fine insider's guide to the real Dinah.

Superficial Biography ... at best.......2004-12-31

Dinah Washington was a great human being as well as a great singer. Cohodas' limited writing skills and lack of insight result in an unwieldy, superficial account of dates, places and people in the life of this passionately human, outstanding artist who was decades ahead of her time. On the other hand, the book provides significant documentation for future biographers. The book gets one star for the excellent cover by Carol Devine Carson who also designed the cover of Bill Clinton's autobiography. Dinah would have loved it!

Given Dinah's magnificent talent, deep spirituality, and complex personality, only a highly skilled writer capable of penetrating social and psychological insights and access to personal materials could craft a biography worthy of her. Someone of the caliber of Toni Morrison, or Maya Angelou at her best, could do her justice. Until then, the brilliant light of Dinah's talents, generosity and love will continue to shine upon the earth bestowed - solo - by the Queen.

It's only the music I love........2004-11-18

I finished this book while listening to her multiple CD collections. The book gets five stars for its scholarship, its extensive notes, its all inclusive index.

But still it seems too cold for the subject at hand, or perhaps I'm just disappointed that Dinah Washington was more shallow than I imagined her to be. Probably the latter.

Also Cohodas's appraisal of the albums I enjoyed most is just the opposite of what I feel myself. What I hear as honest and tragic, the biography calls tired and too husky. And the other way around.

I had no idea that Dinah Washington did "It's Too Soon To Know" before Etta James (who owns the song in my estimation). Etta James came later, and she idolized Dinah Washington and made her sound her own, strings and all.

When Etta James spotted Dinah Washington in the audience at the nightclub where she was singing, she abandoned her original program and sang "Unforgettable" as a tribute to her idol. The song was broken up by Dinah Washington screaming at her, pointing a finger at her saying, "Girl, don't you ever try to do the Queen's songs."

According to Cohodas, Dinah Washington's lovers, to whom she dedicated songs, were usually gone by the time the records were released. She was married seven times and had many lovers in-between. Such as the "Rafael" she mentions on her cover of Irving Berlin's "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm."

Dinah was dead at thirty-nine, but her music lives on and always will for this listener. This biography reminds me again that Art is part the author and part the reader, part the singer and part the listener. What I hear in her music has not changed.

Queen The Life and Music of Dinah Washington

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Queen The Life and Music of Dinah Washington
Cohodas Nadine
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UF940C

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The Incredibles (Prima Official Game Guide)
Ron Dulin
Manufacturer: Prima Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0761547746
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Book Description

Save the day. Your way.
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Book Description

Don't let your company kill you!

Open this book at your own risk. It contains ideas that may lead to a profound self-awakening. An introspective journey for those in the trenches of today's modern organizations, Deep Change is a survival manual for finding our own internal leadership power. By helping us learn new ways of thinking and behaving, it shows how we can transform ourselves from victims to powerful agents of change. And for anyone who yearns to be an internally driven leader, to motivate the people around them, and return to a satisfying work life, Deep Change holds the key.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent read..........2007-01-22

I had to read this book for my executive MBA program, and the class agreed that it was a very relevant and enlightening experience. I work for a large company that had a big merger pending, and I ordered copies for the senior managers that report to me. It is thought-provoking and helps one re-examine oneself with rich anectodes and vignettes that keep the book from descending into psycho-babble or abstract theory.

I highly recommend this book for anyone that is interested making difficult changes in their lives. The fact that Quinn addresses change in both a personal and professional environment makes this book a useful tool for self-enrichment or teams. There are thought-provoking discussion and/or self-reflection questions at the end of each chapter that allow the reader to take what the author has discussed and relate it to their own situation.

Excellent read on real change.......2007-01-10

Quinn's purpose in writing Deep Change is to challenge the reader to recognize that everyone is a potential change agent, if they are willing to take the difficult, yet necessary steps to experience deep personal change. He lays a strong foundation by first differentiating between deep change and incremental change. There is little doubt that most change that takes place in the life of an individual is incremental. Because people are uncomfortable with major change they choose to move in small steps. The possible exception to the choice of incremental change occurs when a person is faced with a major crisis. For example, when a person experiences a heart attack, they are motivated to make deep lifestyle changes in habits such as smoking or dietary chooses. Or when a marriage is on the brink of divorce, marriage partners are motivated to make sweeping changes in how they communicate or handle conflict. However, beyond these periodic times of being motivated by crisis, people usually make changes slowly and incrementally, rather than making needed deep change.

The tendency towards incremental change over deep change is also true on an organizational level. Rarely do organizations, including the church, make deep major changes. While it may be argued that leadership needs to be mindful of bringing people along in the midst of change, there are certainly times that organizations need to experience deep change to survive. Quinn is correct in stating that without deep change, routine patterns move organizations increasingly toward decay and stagnation. This is true in the life of the church today. The church has grown comfortable with the patterns of ministry from years past and as a result has lost much of its influence in the changing culture.

One of Quinn's foundational themes is that personal deep change must precede deep change within a system or organization. While most of the time organizational change is seen as a top-down process, Quinn argues that it can also happen from the bottom-up. He states that deep change requires a personal evaluation of the ideologies that under gird the organizational culture. This is a refreshing insight that has application to other relational contexts. As people desire to see change in the lives of others, whether in parenting, marriage or work relationships, they first need to examine what changes need to occur in themselves. It is true that we do not easily recognize the part that we play in the problem. This thought is consistent with the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:3, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Another topic that is very applicable to numerous arenas of life is Quinn's discussion of the logic of task pursuit. Most people, under the pressure of task completion, have no opportunity to consider routine maintenance. This is true in the life of the individual on multiple levels. If a person does not take time to experience physical renewal through rest and exercise the body will experience exhaustion. This is certainly true with the spiritual life as well. People need to carve out time from the pursuit of tasks to spend time alone with God. The logic of task pursuit is also true in the life of the church. Each church needs to set aside time to revisit its mission and to ensure that the work of the church is in alignment with that mission.

Other helpful insights are found in Quinn's discussion on why organizational change doesn't take place. He states that the dominant coalition in an organization is seldom interested in making deep changes. Therefore, deep change is often driven from the outside. This has been true in the life of many organizations. Furthermore, there are pressures within most organizations to conform to the prevailing structure. Quinn does an excellent job of identifying the barriers of bureaucratic culture, embedded conflict, and personal time constraints. It is helpful to recognize that in most cases people do not need new skills and competencies, but instead they need a new perspective that allows them to act as empowered leaders in a changing organization. While this section on overcoming resistance to change was helpful, it would have been strengthened with practical examples of how individuals brought about significant change.

There is also much to appreciate with Quinn's emphasis on the transitions from the technical, the transactional, and the transformational paradigms. Quinn's description of each paradigm and the paradigm's representative would prove to be very beneficial to any organizational leader's attempt to understand those that they lead and the unique perspective they hold about the organization.

Finally the culmination of Quinn's emphasis on empowerment and ultimate transformation of an organization is what he refers to as the transformational cycle. The cycle is a helpful visual reminder that deep change does not come to a point of completion. It is a cycle that will itself become routine and stagnate if there is not a time of reinvention and realignment of self and the organization.

While written from a business perspective, Deep Change is applicable for anyone who desires to bring about change within an organization. The book is structured in an easy to follow format and includes reflection and discussion questions at the end of each chapter to provide further assistance to the reader in taking steps towards deep change, on both a personal and organizational level.

Deep Change.......2007-01-09

Absolutely one of the best personal and leadership books I have ever used.
Very practical applications. Plan to use as a reference for my managerial library.

Easy to follow recommendations.......2006-10-24

It is interesting that out of the many books that I have read this one does not hit me across the head. However with that said, I re-looked at the book before writing this note and I did mark a lot of text that I found highly useful. I particularly liked the solid recommendations for implementing personal and community change at the end of each chapter. Maybe the fact that the authors do not try wow you with their brilliance but provide solid and easy to follow recommendations is why this book is so valuable. The structure also lends itself to a study group within your management team helping to drive implementation of the principles introduced.

If you are more interested in solid principles to implement rather than the "my way is the best way" often presented, I highly recommend that this book be part of your arsenal to improve personal and community performance. A must for your library.

Deep Change or Slow Death?.......2006-07-11

In this wonderful book, Quinn challenges us to confront our own hypocrisy and make a choice between deep change or slow death -- that is to say between commitment or disengagement. It's actually not an easy choice to make. Most of us have taken the easy path and chosen not to speak out when w've known what needed to be changed. Or, we've run from a difficult work situation, leaving the problems behind for someone else to clean up, not admitting our part in the failure or taking responsibility for changing ourselves.

Quinn instructs us by modeling the behavior we need to follow. Particularly striking, for me, is his personal account of finding himself crying while writing a short story called "The Prophecy." This is a version of the story his mother had told him about his father, who, knowing that he was soon going to die, and seeing his newborn son for the first time, had said, "I think our boy is going to make his mark on the world."

Quinn explains that this true story about his father was etched in his consciousness and had great meaning for him. "In retelling the story I was retelling one of my core myths...I had always heard the story from the perspective of the woman. Now I was telling it from the point of view of a 38-year old man who was dying. The man was asking himself what his life had meant. There was no money, no house, no insurance policy, no signs of worldly success, no legacy to mark his passage."

"Years later, facing a midlife crisis, I was asking myself the very same questions about the meaning of my own life. Without even realizing it, I was trying to deal with the issues of impact and legacy," says Quinn, reflecting on the emotional impact of the story. "As all this become clear, I began to clarify what I wanted to do differently in my life. At work, for example, I took on a different perspective. I became more focused on my research. In my teaching and consulting, I became more caring yet more demanding. The resulting impact, in terms of outcome, was dramatic. I had a new perspective, and my life was changed. I became more empowered and more empowering."

This empowerment is demonstrated by Quinn's role in one intervention he made at one troubled company. In this intervention, Quinn conducted interviews, identified the core issues, and put his insights into writing, calling the resulting document the "Inner Voice of the Organization." This document was structured around eight questions and eight answers -- each answer describing a key issue facing the company and illustrated by a concrete example. Each of the eight issues had previously been "undiscussable," and each issue represented a weakness or need within the company. Quinn listed these issues as follows:

1. "The company is characterized by loyalty and considerable unused human potential
2. The organization must make deep change in order to become more viable and thus to be able to survive in a rapidly evolving world
3. The company is hampered by an unconscious conspiracy of silence and an inability to confront issues and identify needed adjustments
4. "Groupthink" is widespread, and models for constructive conflict are lacking
5. Certain key figures have favored individual good and self-interest over the collective good, and they have been reinforced
6. Everyone would like to believe that certain transparent issues are successfully kept secret. Individuals try to save face by pretending that no one knows what everyone knows--and the process works as long as no one listens to the organization's inner voice
7. A cohesive leadership team is lacking
8. The company has no clear, believable, and motivating vision"

Quinn sent the document to the CEO. He explained that it would be a useful tool to introduce at the outset of the program -- and proposed breaking the participants into five subgroups to discuss the five most important undiscussable issues honestly. He expected the CEO to reject the plan. Instead the CEO made a few factual corrections and agreed to it.

Most striking about this story, apart from the courage and honesty of the approach, is that it seems this identical list of eight issues could be applied to all companies, whether they're in trouble or not. It seems that the issues are universal, grounded in human nature, and that every company faces them to different degrees depending on their specific circumstances.

As Quinn puts it, there is often an "inner voice" in a company that everyone knows but dares not discuss. People know that if they do bring up these issues they will be marginalized and may be fired. It is a risky business to be a change agent, and Quinn does not underplay this. Speaking of one intervention at Ford, Quinn states that "Change means taking risks and facing the possibility of failure. Unfortunately, risk taking sometimes has a negative outcome...approximately 3 percent of participants reported being disciplined for taking initiative, and their anger was apparent. They told us, 'Your program is a fraud. The company doesn't want leaders; it wants conformists.'"

It doesn't take long for people in companies to learn that management cannot be trusted. In this light, it is amazing that around 12 percent in this same program at Ford were willing to engage in the riskiest form of change. The risk-takers were the people who reported higher scores on health, job satisfaction and personal relationships. Surprisingly, they were also usually the oldest participants. "We believe that they had reached a career plateau yet had maintained a positive outlook. They were loyal to Ford and eager to make a positive contribution. Their perception of the "risk-reward ratio" was different...They were willing to confront the pressures of conformity and pay the price of deep change."

So, even in the most jaded of organizations, there are always people able and willing to take a risk to improve the organization for themselves and others -- a finding which is as encouraging as it is surprising.

This is a compelling and useful book. It's written in a poetic way with a deep level of commitment and personal revelation. On the other hand, it's not for those looking for a quick fix. People who assume that the problem is with others and that they can be changed by instruction and coercion will not find it useful. Also, I found the exercises for reflection and discussion were valuable, but hard to use. What's needed, instead, I believe, is a daily practice regimen for personal reflection, and a more carefully designed, more usable set of exercises for use in management teams -- exercises that do not require all participants to have read the book.

However, these are minor criticisms. What differentiates this from the vast majority of other books by business school professors -- and what saves it from irrelevancy -- is the depth of the passion it conveys. Also, the real-life examples. Quinn epitomizes deep change.

If you are a change agent, or intend to become one you should read this book. It has the power to change your life. It could, in fact, be the only book you need. However, I think it will work best when read alongside others. I recommend starting with "Dance of Change," by Peter Senge and some of his colleagues from the Society for Organizational Learning. This will provide an additional perspective, including a wealth of examples of both successful and unsuccessful change efforts and a list of the key impediments to change, consolidating the message that many of the barriers to change are within ourselves.

If you read this book, you are sure to come away with a few ideas you can use or insights that will be of value. I, for one, will not easily forget that I do indeed need to make the choice every day between the slow death of apathy, and the deep change of personal growth. In the end -- hard as it may be -- the choice of reflection and deep change is the only one that makes sense.

Graham Lawes

Deep change : discovering the leader within / Robert E. Quinn

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Deep change : discovering the leader within / Robert E. Quinn
Robert E. Quinn
Manufacturer: San Francisco, Calif. : Jossey-Bass Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VZPAQ8

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