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The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Explodin | |||
The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Explodin |
Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the bestselling author of What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, 100 Bullshit Jobs . . . And How to Get Them, Crazy Bosses, and The Big Bing, as well the novels Lloyd: What Happened and You Look Nice Today. By day, he is an haute executive in a gigantic multinational corporation whose identity is probably known to you.
The pieces are sectioned into themes readers will recognize--office politics, technology, life on the road, men being men, job angst. A number of columns snap and sting. For example, in "You Da Man," Bing details six species of bad bosses including "Don King without the Hair" and "the last days of Dick Nixon." He spins tales from the political crypt, asking readers to join his amusement at "the range of goofy people who are thrown together in the pursuit of political advantage."
Bing is at his best in giving amusing advice (how to give good phone, win turf wars and get a room with a view) and in business travelogues about places like Las Vegas where he sees "several apparently dead people playing slots." The writing bristles with attitude. Only a moving essay on "the mourning after" September 11 interrupts the relentless cynicism of Bing's observations. Some readers will be able stay in on the jokes. Others may find his voice tiring or unkind and may note the difference between insight and wisdom. --Barbara Mackoff --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Twenty years of columns by business humorist Bing (Throwing the Elephant; What Would Machiavelli Do?) from Fortune and Esquire add up to a very funny look at the contemporary executive. The media exec/writer organizes his collected works into a surprisingly coherent whole, containing 11 thematic sections that range from "The Tao of How" (tips on giving good phone and taking lunch with distinction) to "Up and Out" (advice on surviving career death and getting paid to go away). Often, related columns present complete story cycles; Y2K comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb while Bing fires away. "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap chops up companies and then falls on his own blade. Quizzes punctuate the columns: the worst scores on "The Bing Ethics Test" mean "you're a scumball and should do very well." Whenever the outward hostility gets tiring, Bing happily skewers himself. He suffers emotional collapse when he misplaces his BlackBerry and his cell phone: "Uncontrollable drooling made it difficult for me to keep both hands on the wheel. I was incapable of thinking straight or even in a circular fashion." He is "consumed by rage" when his limo does not appear in good time. And yet, the reader can almost always relate, perhaps because underneath the surface, Bing seems so genuinely entertained by the business world. "The good news is this: there is no fate but what you make," he concludes. "So you keep looking, and trying to get it, and to get over on it. And I'll be there with you, as long as there's still a little fun left in it."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Don Imus
"The Big Bing may be the funniest business book ever written." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.