Tag: nonfiction

Book Review: Looking for a Ship, John McPhee

John McPhee is a master writer, and Looking for a Ship is a master narrative. Accompanying second mate Andy Chase during the dying days of the American Merchant Marine in the late ’80s, McPhee crafts a spellbinding tale of ships, sailors and the seas they travel on. There are a stories of bravery and skill, incompetence and foolishness, piracy and prostitutes, bureaucracy and bananas, shipwrecks and storms, and containers full of everything you can imagine and many things you can’t.

Every character is memorably portrayed, and the characters, the people, are all phenomenally interesting. Their struggles and triumphs, little moments of boredom and humanity, are all worth reading about (and nobody describes moustaches like McPhee). These people are masters at their craft, they work extensive and intensive hours, and their jobs are disappearing as they work. McPhee shows the tragedy of this process without eliciting unnecessary pity for the men who work on these ships with pride. He is an observer, but one that makes even the most dull minutiae of the world of the Merchant Marine come to life. Never have container manifests been so interesting.

While Andy Chase is an intriguing character, it is his captain, Paul McHenry Washburn, that shines in this story. Washburn is a man so fascinating, leading a life so rich, that he alone could be the hero of a book series, or even a summer blockbuster.

Looking for a Ship is a treasure of a book, an excellent story about people, craftsmanship, skill, the sea and those that make their living shipping our purchases across it. A highly recommended book for all who read.

Book Review: Dealing With Difficult People – Harvard Business Review

Dealing with Difficult People is part of a series of small booklets on the topic of emotional intelligence that the Harvard Business Review published. It’s a collection of essays, each of them short, well-written, and contains useful and practical information on different aspects of dealing with difficult people in workplace settings: colleagues, bosses, reports and even how do you avoid being a difficult person to work with yourself.

The articles in this collection include “To Resolve a Conflict, First Is It Hot or Cold?” by Mark Gerzon; “Taking the Stress Out of Stressful Conversations,” by Holly Weeks; “The Secret to Dealing with Difficult It’s About You,” by Tony Schwartz; “How to Deal with a Mean Colleague,” by Amy Gallo; “How To Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague,” by Amy Gallo; “How to Work with Someone Who’s Always Stressed Out,” by Rebecca Knight; “How to Manage Someone Who Thinks Everything Is Urgent,” by Liz Kislik; and “Do You Hate Your Boss?” by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries.

The essays are all interesting and make their points well and concisely. Many of them offer relatively realistic scenarios that you can encounter when dealing with a certain type of difficult person, and then walk you through how to best deal with each scenario. Because all the essays are short the ratio of actionable advice to lines of text in the articles is excellent – there’s no padding or fluff here. There is a good range of tools that you can add to your “people wrangling” toolbox, and that’s always a plus.

Where this booklet falls short is precisely in its brevity. Complex scenarios are breezed through, things are solved relatively easily and on the first try. In reality dealing with difficult people in the workplace is a “superpower” that requires a lot of consistent effort and skill. You will never reach a tolerable equilibrium on the first try – indeed there’s a chance that you will never reach it at all. There is no book, let alone a slim booklet, that can teach you all that it takes in one fell swoop. You’ll need to deal with every situation and person as they occur, and what books of this kind can do is provide you with tools and approaches to do that.

If you are dealing with difficult people in the workplace, then this is book is a good place to start from. Just take into account that it’s going to be a long and hard process, and one little book isn’t going to solve all your problems and give you everything you need. Set your expectations accordingly and you won’t be disappointed.