Book Description
In the first full biography of actor Sidney Poitier, Aram Goudsouzian analyzes the life and career of a Hollywood legend, from his childhood in the Bahamas to his 2002 Oscar for lifetime achievement. Poitier is a gifted actor, a great American success story, an intriguing personality, and a political symbol; his life and career illuminate America's racial history.
In such films as Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Poitier's middle-class, mannered, virtuous screen persona contradicted prevailing film stereotypes of blacks as half-wits, comic servants, or oversexed threats. His screen image and public support of nonviolent integration assuaged the fears of a broad political center, and by 1968, Poitier was voted America's favorite movie star.
Through careful readings of every Poitier film, Goudsouzian shows that Poitier's characters often made sacrifices for the good of whites and rarely displayed sexuality. As the only black leading man during the civil rights era, Poitier chose roles and public positions that negotiated the struggle for dignity. By 1970, times had changed and Poitier was the target of a backlash from film critics and black radicals, as the new heroes of "blaxploitation" movies reversed the Poitier model.
In the 1970s, Poitier shifted his considerable talents toward directing, starring in, and producing popular movies that employed many African Americans, both on and off screen. After a long hiatus, he returned to starring roles in the late 1980s. More recently, the film industry has reappraised his career, and Poitier has received numerous honors recognizing his multi-faceted work for black equality in Hollywood. As this biography affirms, Poitier remains one of American popular culture's foremost symbols of the possibilities for and limits of racial equality.
Customer Reviews:
A detailed and insightful portrait of the man.......2007-02-04
Those who came of age after Poitier had receded from the spotlight (such as me) would do well to read Goudsouzian's thoughtful and well researched book. It was a fascinating trip to discover an icon who has been ignored in today's times despite deserving many more accolades than he has been given. What is most compelling about the book, though, is the author's skill in placing his subject in historical context, without which the story would be incomplete. I agree with the previous reviewer -- let's hope Oprah's spotlight on Poitier reflects some light on Goudsouzian as well.
Don't stop at the autobiography . . ........2007-01-27
Always suspicious of autobiographies, I picked up a copy of "Man, Actor, Icon" for a historian's take on this legend of the Silver Screen. And this book certainly does not disappoint. I strongly and sincerely recommend Dr. Goudsouzian's book for people who truly aspire to understand Sidney Poitier's place in history.
This work provides its readers with an eloquent and even-handed record of the life and times of its subject. Goudsouzian's work effectively sketches Poitier's place in a broader historical context - a history of African Americans, of film, of race, of tolerance and of America as a whole. I applaud the author for so eloquently piecing together the life and times of such a notoriously private individual. To see the movies is one thing. To read the autobiography is another. But to actually appreciate what this man has meant, what he endured and the legacy that he has created, one needs an accurate idea of the historical settings and prevailing attitudes that put Poitier's actions and accomplishments in the proper context. Goudsouzian delivers on all counts.
Many thanks to Oprah for bringing much-deserved attention to one of America's more unheralded icons. To really appreciate the man behind the screen, "The Measure of a Man" is a wonderful start. But to truly grasp how such an influential figure was rejected, lauded, embraced, used and again overlooked - all in a single lifetime - this book will provide you with all you need to form your own opinion of the measure of this man, this Sidney Poitier.
Customer Reviews:
An entertaining reader.......2003-04-21
I was increedibly pleased to find this book. I have used it with my elementary-school-age kids, whom I started teaching Spanish with the Pimsleur course. Pimsleur is excellent, but it is almost all audio. Cuentitos simpaticos is an excellent first reader for several reasons: (1) The stories are short enough that one can be completed in a single session. (2) They are really funny; that they are so entertaining helps motivate the student to continue, despite difficulty. (3) New words and expressions are translated in the margin. (This compares to Spanish story books, ostensibly for younger children, that have words and expressions I cannot even find in my dictionary.) My kids have not had the patience to do the execises, which reinforce vocabulary and patterns, but others may find them useful. The book was written by a high-school teacher; I think adults, as well as kids, would find the stories engaging.
Book Description
A reader for your advanced beginning Spanish students
Cuentitos simpáticos is the second in a three-level reader series. It presents humorous dialogues which include illustrations depicting cultural characteristics of Spanish-speaking countries. The material is presented in Spanish through a vocabulary of level-appropriate words or expressions. A wide variety of exercises follow for review and reinforcement. This reader is softcover and measures 6” × 9”.
Amazon.com
Kids thrive on mental stimulation--but it has to be fun. This book truly does the job. The big volume is well sized for children to handle, printed large for easy reading, and is loaded with picture puzzles, word play, logic and math teasers, general games, and trivia. Games Magazine's famous sense of humor will make your favorite kids smile and even laugh outright. Meanwhile they sharpen their perceptual and thinking skills as they play. The activities are even more enjoyable when you play along. Have a copy handy for a long trip or a rainy day.
Book Description
Kids will love with this fun-filled collection of brain-twisters from America's premiere puzzle publication.
Customer Reviews:
Puzzles for Kids.......2000-06-02
I highly recommend this book! I am a 6th grade teacher in Clayton County. My students really enjoy working on these puzzles. The level of difficulty varies with the different puzzles allowing me to meet the needs of all my students, despite their varied ability levels. These puzzles are a great way to entertain and encourage students of different ages and ability levels.
Amazon.com
When it comes to presenting a mixed bag of puzzles and games, the editors of Games magazine are the masters. In this second giant collection they once again provide variety wide enough to tickle all parts of your brain--verbal, logical, mathematical, trivial, visual, and even your ability to twist concepts in humorous ways. You can count on challenges that will make you feel brilliant as well as some to drive you buggy--and make you love it. The famous Games magazine wit makes for even greater fun, but watch out--it sometimes makes play trickier than it first appears.
Book Description
Nearly 200 pages of games, puzzles, head-twisters, and mind-teasers from Games Magazine that are both visually intriguing and intellectually challenging, including 32 pages in full color!
If you enjoy the puzzles in this book, you're sure to like these other collections from Games Magazine:
Nearly 200 pages of games, puzzles, and mind-bogglers of infinite variety
150 of the toughest word puzzles from the magazine
Book Description
A wonderful collection of games, puzzles, mind teasers, and head twisters from Games magazine.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2001-03-16
Full of puzzles, really make your brain think. Highly recommend!
Amazon.com
Allegories and parables have long been effective ways to impart serious bits of knowledge and wisdom without getting too pedantic, and business readers seem increasingly receptive to sensible management theory that employs this lively age-old literary technique. Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, a "leadership fable" by Patrick Lencioni, continues the trend with a solid prescription for organizational health--aiming for less politics, lower turnover, more productivity, and higher morale. Presented as a fictional tale of two technical consultants and their competing companies, the story is structured in a fashion that recalls his previous book (The Five Temptations of a CEO, whose main character and firm are even slipped into this narrative). Lencioni uses this hypothetical setting to show how his concepts might look and work in the real world. In this case, his "four disciplines at the heart of making any organization world class" are revealed and explained through the philosophy and behavior of Rich O'Connor of Telegraph Partners. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team, create organizational clarity, communicate organizational clarity, and reinforce organizational clarity through human systems. Through his tale of Telegraph and its rival Greenwich Consulting, Lencioni illustrates how these principles can be beneficially employed--and how an organization can be stymied when they're missing. The story moves quickly and is followed by a comprehensive analytical summary, which includes self-assessment tools and suggestions for putting the ideas into practice. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
In this stunning follow-up to his best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick Lencioni offers up another leadership fable that's every bit as compelling and illuminating as its predecessor. This time, Lencioni's focus is on a leader's crucial role in building a healthy organization--an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success. Readers are treated to a story of corporate intrigue as the frustrated head of one consulting firm faces a leadership challenge so great that it threatens to topple his company, his career, and everything he holds true about leadership itself. In the story's telling, Lencioni helps his readers understand the disarming simplicity and power of creating organizational health, and reveals four key disciplines that they can follow to achieve it.
Customer Reviews:
Obviously, not all obsessions are productive and beneficial.......2007-07-12
This is one in a series of "leadership fables" in which Patrick Lencioni shares his thoughts about the contemporary business world. His characters are fictitious human beings rather than anthropomorphic animals, such as a tortoise that wins a race against a hare or pigs that lead a revolution to overthrow a tyrant and seize control of his farm.
In this instance, Lencioni focuses on a common business problem for or challenge to leaders: How to identify "a reasonable number of issues that will have the greatest possible impact on the success of [their] organization, and then spend most [their] time thinking about, talking about, and working on those issues." Presumably Lencioni agrees with Stephen Covey (among others) that executives tend to spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important. Of course, that sets a bad example for their direct reports. Viewed another way, some obsessions are productive...others are not. Extraordinary executives know the differences between the two types.
Here's the fictitious situation. Lencioni introduces CEOs of two rival firms in the Bay Area, Vince Green (Greenwich Consulting) and Rich O'Connor (Telegraph Partners) who have quite different obsessions: Green's are best revealed within the book's narrative; Green's are directly or indirectly the result what could be described as Greenwich Consulting's organizational inferiority complex insofar as Telegraph Partners is concerned. There is an early and significant development when O'Connor - struggling to cope with the pressures of trying to balance his family and his successful but demanding business - experiences what Lencioni characterizes as an "epiphany": the recognition of four basis activities ("disciplines, really") that guide and inform his leadership of Telegraph Partners thereafter. "He never certainly suspected that [his list of what become leadership obsessions] would become the blue-print of an employee's plan to destroy the firm."
Almost immediately, it becomes obvious that a new hire, Jamie Bender, "didn't seem to share the hunger and humility of his colleagues" at Telegraph Partners and that is a key point for reasons also best revealed within Lencioni's narrative. Recognizing the mistake, O'Connor must decide how to correct it. Over time, he and his colleagues become infected by what Lencioni describes as a "virus." What then happens - and does not happen - throughout the ensuing weeks allow Lencioni to dramatize both the importance of the four "obsessions of an extraordinary executive" to which the title of his book refers and the consequences when any one of them is compromised. He is a brilliant business thinker but he also possesses the skills of a master raconteur, introducing a cast of characters, conflicts between and among them, and then allowing "rising action" build to a climax (i.e. resolution) also best revealed within the narrative.
Of special interest to me is a conversation between Bender and Green when Bender explains each of the four disciplines with which O'Connor is obsessed. This conversation occurs late in the narrative and indicates that Bender understands the four disciplines and yet is unwilling and/or unable to master and then follow them. (This strikes me as an excellent example of what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton characterize as the "Knowing-Doing Gap.") Bender's explanation seems somewhat didactic to me but, nonetheless, serves as a means by which Lencioni can summarize his key points. He adds a nice dramatic touch when O'Connor appears at Green's office and there is a brief encounter between him and Bender before he and Green meet. Although they and other executives are fictitious characters, each is credible as a human being rather than as a literary device.
As is Lencioni's custom in each of the other volumes in the series of "leadership fables," he then provides an "Organizational Health: The Model" section and supplementary material (Pages 139-180) whose value-added benefits will help his reader to make effective application of the lessons learned from the experiences shared by Rich O'Connor and his colleagues at Telegraph Partners as well as from what Vince Green finally realizes about himself and about the consequences of his own obsessions.
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Patrick Lencioni's other "leadership fables" as well as Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, Bill George's Authentic Leadership and his more recently published True North, James O'Toole's Creating the Good Life, and Michael Maccoby's Narcissistic Leaders.
Highly Effective Teaching Tool.......2006-12-27
So far I've given this book to 3 of my middle managers in an effort to explain to them what type of company I want to run. Every one of them has found Four Obsessions incredibly useful. I'd make it required reading for anyone in your business that needs help understanding the way a company should operate.
Simple and powerful - Do it and see what happens!.......2006-11-03
Lencioni writes this as a leadership fable, and at the end of it, does a section explaining the 4 disciplines in greater detail.
The fable is about 2 competing companies in the same space but of different performance. One CEO wanted to know what it is about the other company. A new hiring of the lauded company became the problem of the company and has insecurities and was not able to fit in to the company culture. But in that time, he learns what goes on in that company and after resigning, he heads for the other company and begins to tell that CEO what was going on in there.
This is an interesting fable where you can draw out lessons from it. It does show that no CEO is perfect, and many are just ordinary people who simply choose to put a focus on what needs to be done, and so he does - the 4 disciplines.
Lencioni writes that "no one but the head of an organization can make it healthy... and so... it is actually more important for leaders to focus on making their organization healthy..." I believe the principle to be true, as any living creature that is healthy will automatically grow.
The 4 disciplines are:
1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team.
2. Create organizational clarity.
3. Over-communicate organizational clarity.
4. Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems.
Lencioni's parting remarks in this book were, "First, there is nothing more important than making an organization healthy... Second, there is no substitute for discipline." Be inspired that you can make a difference as a leader wherever you are!
It was good - especially since I had to read it.......2006-07-11
I enjoyed this book. I had to read it for class, so the fact that it was prefaced with a very enjoyable story was a HUGE plus! Since I am someone actively seeking management, I found this book to be helpful with my life goals - although it seems a little simple, I am looking forward to putting this into practice!
Great Writing, Thin on Research.......2006-06-24
Easy to read, well written, a page turner. It also contains a few profound thoughts--namely the four disciplines:
1) Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team
2) Create Organizational Clarity
3) Over-Communicate Organization Clarity
4) Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems.
The fable does a great job illustrating the meaning and application of these four disciplines. Unfortunately it stops at that. There is no appendix referencing facts, studies or collaborative evidence proving that these four obsessions really work as illustrated. (Other research based material I've read does back it up) Not including a "hardcore" chapter in this volume definitely lowers the quality of the book. But, overall I still found it an excellent book, well worth my time.
Book Description
An elegant, attractively priced box set of the bestselling leadership fables
This set brings together all three of Patrick Lencioni's successful leadership fables: The Five Temptations of a CEO, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Each book combines an engaging fictional story with insightful analysis to address some of the major obstacles facing leaders today. All three of the stories are aimed at helping readers build healthy organizations, focusing on results, not politics. While these tales are set in the business world, Lencioni's wisdom and practical advice will appeal to general readers and benefit leaders in any field. The classic and consistent design of the trilogy make this a perfect gift set.
Patrick M. Lencioni (Emeryville, CA) is President of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational effectiveness. As a consultant and executive coach, he has worked with hundreds of senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and high tech start-ups to universities and nonprofits. Some of his clients include Novell, AT&T, Visa, and The Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. He has worked internationally in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico.
Books:
- Soular Reunion: Journey to the Beloved -- Re-Membering the Love of Self, Soulmates & Twin Souls
- Spaghetti Nightmares: Italian Fantasy-Horrors As Seen Through The Eyes Of Their Protagonists
- Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
- The Big Book of French Songs: Popular Songs, Movie Hits, Musical Theatre Songs, Folksongs
- The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film
- The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975
- The Complete Films of Clark Gable (Repr)
- The English Patient: A Screenplay
- The Fan Survival Guide : 50 Ways to Meet Your Favorite Celebrity
- The Film Experience: An Introduction
Books Index
Books Home
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Actors & Actresses
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)
Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light
Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood
Sidney Poitier (Black American Series)
