Reviews for Successful Writing at Work Concise + Murdick Portable Business Writer + Ober Business Commun...

The average rating for Successful Writing at Work Concise + Murdick Portable Business Writer + Ober Business Commun... based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-08-01 00:00:00 David V Gutierrez This book's 460 pages contain a nice 200-page biography of Andy Grove. Unfortunately, the book also contains reams of inexplicable verbiage. The way to read this book is to skip around aggressively. Any paragraph that starts with "Remember," "Note," or "Consider" is going to restate something you read a few pages ago. Skip. Any paragraph with a classical or pop-culture allusion will also include the author's review. Skip. These heuristics will lop off about 10% of the text. But there are other nuggets of badness that are hard to skip. A few lowlights: * On page 132, in a single paragraph, the author explains the connotation of "360" in brand name three times. You had me at "360." * P. 224: the book notes that even when Intel was in a slump, no Wall Street analyst rated it a "sell." Even after the 2003 analyst research settlement, this is like bragging that however ugly you are your mom will still call you "reasonably handsome." * 248: the author makes a big deal about how rare it is for someone to be good at engineering and then to become a good manager. While one can make allowances, here—perhaps there's a very high threshold for goodness—engineering is the single most common undergraduate degree among Fortune 500 CEOs. * 312: a bizarre riff on the fact that Bill Gates' last name is "Gates" and he's like a barrier you have to cross to get into the PC industry, or something, complete with a classical allusion so detailed it required an endnote. * Two separate references to getting "listed" on the Dow. You get listed on an exchange. * Early in the book there's a five-page Jungian jam session analyzing a dream Grove had about an angry dog, in which the dog is said to potentially represent: an actual dog, Andy Grove's coworkers, Andy Grove's dad, Andy Grove himself, and the Holocaust. Cut all the weird excesses, and this would be an unremarkably good book about an extraordinary guy.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-08 00:00:00 Raymond Dzik Worth reading up to chapter 13 included. Negative points: - Author's explanations about the computing business and the computing technologies are often approximate, or plain wrong. - Too long, particularly parts where author talks about certain events like cancer and the Pentium bug. - Second part of the book is less about Grove than about computing industry and business in general (did author not get enough help from Grove & entourage?). - May be "illuminating", but is a below par book nevertheless.