Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

Review

Though reading more as a biography than a straight treatise on business practices, Isadore Sharp’s memoir Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy provides for an interesting glimpse into a subject I never formally studied. Sharp formed his iconic hotel empire “from a customer’s perspective” (xv), closely examining consumer trends and demands in order to offer the best possible service and amenities in the hospitality industry.

Sharp does offer up an interesting enough history of his business, examining his mistakes with the same enthusiasm with which he celebrates his successes. The son of Polish immigrants, Sharp began his career working in the family construction business in Toronto. He credits their “assurance of self-confidence and the[ir] guidance of values” as instrumental in the establishment of Four Seasons as a family- and community-oriented business structure. Although Sharp delves deeply into the history of his beloved company, I thought his specific examples of how it gives back to the community as well as providing excellent and attentive customer service stood out as the strongest elements of the book. In 1989, Four Seasons and other Toronto hotels sent “forty-five tons of relief supplies” (183) to help the victims of Hurricane Hugo – and “well in advance” (183) of government agencies such as FEMA. He mentions the way one of the Maldives branches plunged into action when a tsunami struck in 2007, where “all the two hundred employees acted intuitively to help” (261) the victims in any way they could – and nobody sustained anything beyond minor injuries. Even small things such as the expectation that hotel staff keep regular tabs on the needs and preferences of regular and “special attention guests” (232) with disabilities, severe allergies, and other needs stood out.

While I can’t speak about the Four Seasons service firsthand, it was at least nice to read about how the staff is taken care of by the corporation, and how they pass that attentiveness down to the customer. Even though the book was not always entertaining, it still made for a nice read. I especially enjoyed perusing the stories of a major corporation operating almost as if a smaller, more personable one – that’s not something one comes across terribly often! But it seems as if the formula works, and hopefully others will become inspired to follow suit.

Bibliographic Information

Sharp, Isadore. Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy. New York: Portfolio, 2009.

Further Reading

This is the first book on corporate culture and philosophy I’ve read, honestly, so my frame of reference is quite narrow. Any of you out there have suggestions?

~Riot

Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Review

Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was the last of his books that I planned on reading before Inauguration Day, and so my self-imposed mission is now complete. Unlike The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream and Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise, this book is intended as a memoir moreso than ruminations on politics, and is therefore categorized under the Biography/Autobiography heading rather than Political Science. It also happens to be his strongest work thus far.

Written while still attending law school at Harvard, Dreams From My Father is so thematically weighty and heavily detailed that it reads almost as if a coming-of-age novel rather than a memoir. Chronicling his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia straight through an enlightening search for paternal closure amongst the Luo tribe of Kenya, Obama relates every facet of his life as it relates to his attempts to come to terms with his biracial identity and absent father. He explores these two main themes extensively throughout every chapter, struggling to obtain solid footing into two separate racial worlds during the Black Power movement and oftentimes feeling distanced and isolated from both. Frequent disillusionist bouts of apathy and youthful angst resulting from his father’s desertion and eventual death drive him to self-abuse while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, but the most interesting and compelling experiences in his life come with his stint as a community organizer in the South Side housing projects of Chicago and eventual journey to Kenya.

Obama’s social consciousness expands considerably while working to unify churches in and around the Altgeld Gardens area. Though he had experienced racism throughout his childhood, it is in Chicago where he begins to see with his own eyes the ravages such a poisonous mindset can sow. Poverty, apathy, violence, and crime become the norm, and he encounters those who face these trials with either admirable empowerment or divisive embitterment. It is a bittersweet portrait of a community struggling to better itself while surrounded by bureaucracy, hopelessness,  and rage.

My personal favorite chapter, however, involves Omaba’s extended trip to Kenya in order to learn more about the father who left him and his mother when he was only two years old. There, he meets the other half of his family and begins to piece together the fragments of his father’s complex, conflicted life after he fled back to his homeland. The disconcerting postcolonial atmosphere of Nairobi in many ways parallels the desperation and subjugation experienced by the African-American communities in Chicago, making Obama’s excursion to Kenya the ultimate event in trying to carve out both a sense of family and community and a personal identity to call his own.

Bibliographical Information

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.

Further Reading

Dreams From My Father is the first memoir of its type that I have read, but there were some works of fiction that popped into my head frequently that have thematic similarities. Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country is the quintessential postcolonial novel. Though it takes place in the South African sociopolitical climate rather than that of Kenya, the hardships and abuse suffered by the native tribes at the hands of their European oppressors are the same. Ralph Ellison’s haunting Invisible Man involves a young African-American man’s quest for identity against the burgeoning black nationalist movement that came to a crescendo during Obama’s lifetime.

~Riot

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Review

I’m not really a fan of books penned by celebrities, but Anthony Bourdain is one of the very few that I absolutely do not mind making an exception for due to the delightfully acid wit characterizing his interviews and television programs. I was curious to see if it seeped its way into his writing as well, which is what attracted me to read Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly in the first place. Thankfully, it beyond seeped – the book is a veritable cascade of hyperintelligent snark conveying a genuine appreciation for the culinary arts.

Bourdain “wasn’t intending to write an exposé” (xiii) on the restaurant business, nor is he wanting to stand as “an advocate for change” (xiii) – so those looking for anything beyond an honest portrayal of life as a line cook are better off seeking Upton Sinclair or Jane Addams for their alarmist whistle-blowing fix. The book is studded with stories of the marginalized and eccentric figures Bourdain encounters while attending the Culinary Institute of America and his stints in a dizzying array of restaurants. But this cast of cooks, chefs, busboys, waitrons, and dishwashers is not populated by the bubble-brained, silicone-breasted blow-up dolls straight from central casting that plague the Food Network. As befits a Bourdain book, they are endearingly profane, riddled with occasionally debilitating tics, and so hedonistic in their private lives they’d make Caligula blush. This is not a book for sensitive viewing audiences.

But in spite of the dry-humpings, the cocaine benders, and the odd death threat from La Cosa Nostra, the book is balanced by a genuine passion for the finer things in life as well. Bourdain lovingly recalls a childhood trip to France and his first encounter with a raw oyster eaten fresh from the briny sea. He writes of lush gourmet meals in sumptuous detail - a stark contrast to the unbridled chaos personified by those who make it. Kitchen Confidential is an amazing balancing act between the elegant, the crude, and everything in between, showcasing Bourdain’s ability to embrace and appreciate a staggeringly wide array of what life has to offer. An emphasis on only the highbrow would tip the book into pretentious territory, and too much focus on the lowbrow would render it too explicit and juvenile for most people’s taste. Fortunately, Kitchen Confidential suffers from neither ailment.

That honest and occasionally self-deprecating lust for life and learning is the book’s greatest strength. With his trademark dry wit and gift for detached sarcasm laden with mischevious bravado, Bourdain’s memoirs run through the entire spectrum of human emotion to present an end product that is both hysterical and sympathetic. His bombastic love of food, travel, and the people he encounters along the way is undeniable and fully engaging. This autobiography is less about ego – though Bourdain is no stranger to raging displays of machismo – and more about sharing a true love of fine cuisine, exotic locales, colorful personalities, and all the other riches that can be gleaned from life.

Bibliographical Information

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Further Reading

Another kind of odd recommendation, but I couldn’t help but compare Anthony Bourdain to comic book writer Harvey Pekar. Neither of them dismiss the enjoyment that can be had in the finer luxuries, but in their works they prefer to tone down their obviously generous intellects in order to shed light on the mundane, the overlooked, and the crude. Their writing styles and personalities are startling similar, with Bourdain leaning more towards the sociable and Pekar on the crankier, isolationist side of the spectrum. Any of his American Splendor collections are fine reads. While they have little to nothing to do with food or life in a restaurant kitchen, they are all very similar in tone and tempo to Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.  

~Riot

Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

Review

Rob Sheffield’s bittersweet Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time is required reading for anyone who can’t function without access to a playlist of any sort within a five foot radius. It is a loving homage to the central role music can play in our lives, from times of joy through times of sorrow and all the painful, nauseating awkwardness in between. Sheffield mercifully stops short of veering off into navel-gazing self-aggrandizement, and his story of how music buoyed him through being widowed at age 30 is as touching as it is tragic.

His tenderly insecure courtship an eventual marriage to Reneé, “a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl” (4) who shocks him out of his self-induced emotional complacency, opens the memoir. They begin a friendship over Big Star and the B-52′s and fall in love to a soundtrack of R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw, and The Velvet Underground. The both of them chronicle their brief time together through a seemingly endless stream of mix tapes intended for everything from help falling asleep to passing the time while doing dishes. It’s certainly sweet, but Sheffield is kind enough to dilute any potentially saccharine, queasily Disney-esque moments with his ironic wit and self-deprecating humor. May the deity (or deities) of his choice smile upon him for that.

The true emotional core of the book, however, comes after Reneé’s instantaneous death from an unexpected pulmonary embolism. She had only been married to Sheffield to five years, and he finds himself forced to come to terms with widowhood at the age of 30. Lost and overwhelmed with memories and confusion, he retreats inward and seeks solace through Sleater-Kinney, Frank Sinatra, and Skeeter Davis. He meanders aimlessly through valleys of loneliness and despair with little but a well-loved Walkman and a “high-strung” (92) beagle named after Duane Allman for company. Sudden widowhood deadens his emotions and senses – he “[doesn't] have a noun” (160) for the agony coursing through the marrow of his very being. Music is all that prevents Sheffield from succumbing completely to the encroaching darkness of life without his beloved.

In spite of the understandably morose episodes following his loss, the story concludes on an upbeat note of emotional redemption following Sheffield’s move to New York. However, the real heart and most sympathetic emotions of the story lay in how he managed to find and glue together the jagged shards of his life to get to where he is today. How can happiness and success be genuinely appreciated without having first slogged through the quagmires of a personalized hell? And what better way to survive the trials that befall us than a lovingly constructed loop of favorite songs and musicians? Love is a Mix Tape is recommended for those of us who feel the need to investigate the skeletons in a potential partner’s iPod before proceeding to the closet, and for anyone who understands how even a simple song can make all the difference in the world to one struggling person.

Bibliographical Information

Sheffield, Rob. Love Is a Mix Tape : Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. New York: Crown, 2007.

Further Reading

Though it predates Love is a Mix Tape by twelve years, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity comes the closest to mirroring the same themes. It is a work of fiction, unlike Sheffield’s book, and it concerns coming to grips with a separation rather than a death, but aside from that the two are almost nigh-indistinguishable in the way the protagonists need music to guide them through rough patches. I was actually genuinely surprised that Sheffield never made any allusions to High Fidelity at any point considering these similarities, though there is the possibility that I did not catch them on my first time through. Both books are a necessary addition to the bookshelf of impassioned music fans looking to read something other than band biographies or histories.

~Riot

Faith of my Fathers: A Family Memoir

Review

Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir by John McCain and Mark Salter is the third installment in my goal to read and review at least one book by every current presidential candidate before Election Day. Sadly, it may be the last if I keep having difficulty tracking down literature by third party or independent candidates, but I have at least now covered one book each by the three most visible options – Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, and John McCain. So I have that going for me. Unlike Crashing the Party and The Audacity of Hope, however, Faith of My Fathers is not intended as a political treatise, and is therefore filed under the “Biography/Autobiography” section rather than “Political Science.”

I didn’t wholly dislike Faith of My Fathers, but it definately could have benefitted from considerable amounts of tweaking and revision. The title is somewhat misleading, for example. McCain only spends the first 96 pages out of 349 discussing his family’s long military history, with the rest of the book dedicated to his own personal experiences in the Navy. Readers are only given memories and perspectives of his grandfather and father that paint a two-dimensional portrait of each – much is spoken of their impressive accomplishments as Naval admirals, but we are given little but mere glimpses into them as men. I personally did not think McCain did as good a job weaving in the lessons he learned from his father and grandfather into the main narrative as the title implies. His grandfather and father ought to be commended as soldiers, but I would have liked to see McCain go into more depth in regards to their character outside of a military setting and the role they played in forming him into the man he’d become.

The majority of the book emphasizes McCain’s own experiences as an arrogant hedonist in the Naval Academy, the Vietnam War, and as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. While he has a tendency to jump between time frames as he recounts the horrors experienced in the POW camps, the primary accounts of the tortures committed within their grimy walls are the strongest stories offered. Faith of My Fathers could have been improved greatly had McCain narrowed his focus to only recount his life shortly before, during, and after incarceration. It’s visceral stuff – not entertaining so much as it is a startling first-person perspective on an important and controversial era in American history. Not the definitive one, as none ought to be, but it’s important to try and read as many accounts as possible in order to form your own opinion. It is best to approach Faith of My Fathers from the mindset of trying to learn about and understand the torment of life in a POW camp, but as a family memoir I found it surprisingly coming up short in the family department.

Bibliographical Information

McCain, John, and Mark Salter. Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir. New York: Random House, Incorporated, 1999.

Further Reading

It’s been forever since I last read it, but James Bradley’s and Ron Powers’s similarly-titled Flags of Our Fathers is a pretty good read that infuses family memories with military experiences as well. It’s about World War II instead of Vietnam, but I think it does a better job of accomplishing what McCain set out to write with Faith of My Fathers.

~Riot