Reviews for Authors of their own lives

The average rating for Authors of their own lives based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-16 00:00:00 Randy Bryant "I could remember, in my own student days, how easily I was persuaded by nearly every theorist I read, regardless of whether I was told that I could not be a Durkheimian and a Weberian at the same time, or a Tocquevillian and a Marxist. Read in isolation and without background, each important writer makes a persuasive case to an innocent student. Under normal conditions of study it can take years, even decades, to become attuned to the hidden agendas, the strategic omissions, the invisible antagonists, the metaphysical pathos (to use Gouldner's phrase, borrowed from Alfred Lovejoy) in a piece of sociological prose. Hence it can take years to become a critical reader, attentive not only to the objective historical contexts in which a writer writes but also to what Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus: the experienced milieu whose more or less unreflectively internalized culture shapes the sensibility evident to a close reader in a piece of prose, and familiarity with which enables us to say of its author that we know, metaphorically speaking, where she's coming from, if not quite where she's going to."

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-17 00:00:00 Arthur Black For its target audience, it's a pretty good book. It's primarily aimed at providing an overview of management principles and related topics. It's an attractive book with lots of diagrams (with some of them being overly complex) and what are good explanations and details about the topics addressed. It should be noted that this book focuses on the techniques and processes, rather than actual practice or the ethics of said practices. It also could use a bit more proofreading as there are bad typos and a few formatting issues, as well as issues with different uses of definitions. Overall, an adequate introduction book geared for learners.