Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged work

Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways

Pan American World Airways was not simply an airline in the way that we understand airlines today. It was an icon, a gateway, and enjoyed (and still enjoys) a cult-like following. In this fascinating look into the Nisei stewardesses of Pan Am, Yano explores the postwar ideology of the airline and its relation to the experience of the Nisei stewardesses.

The Book Bindery

I just read a wonderful interview with the great poet Martin Espada, in which he talks about the beauty found in writing on all kinds of subjects. Espada himself has worked as a bouncer, a gas station attendant, and everything in between. His words immediately rang in my mind as I sat and devoured Sarah Royal's anecdotes on working in an actual book bindery in an industrial section of Chicago.

Women Count: A Guide to Changing the World

As a single mom with two jobs and an interest in finding space for volunteerism and activism, I immediately connected with Susan Bulkeley Butler’s interconnected main points—that the ways we “count” women don’t always count, and that women need to take control of the ways in which they “count” on personal and political levels.

The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School

Has the glass ceiling been shattered? There is a widely accepted perception that it has. However, as author Selena Rezvani points out in chapter one of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, although women make up 46.5 percent of the U.S. workforce, they constitute only 15.7 percent of corporate officers.

The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week

I was looking forward to reviewing The Artist in the Office because it seemed so relevant to the situation many people I know find themselves in, myself included.

Breadwinners: Working Women and Economic Independence 1865-1920

My take on wages parallels my elementary understanding of the laws of quantum mechanics versus those of Newtonian physics. Come the revolution, wages won’t be necessary; but now, different rules apply. With bills to pay, I want money. Earning one’s own money brings self-respect and a sense of independence. It beats charity or being a dependent in a family.

Variety

Christine is desperately seeking employment. She doesn’t want to leave New York City and return to Michigan to teach, and doesn’t feel confident that her writing will bring in sufficient income. Although Christine’s story is happening in 1983, the same story could be told as a result of today’s recession. What do you do when you can’t find a job in your field? Well, you branch out and find the first job available. It turns out that the first available job is as a ticket holder in a box office at an adult theater in Times Square.

Live Wire: Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry

Live Wire provides a full and exhaustively detailed history of the presence of women in the construction electrical trade, discussing and illustrating the enormous challenges that female electricians still face. By also discussing the mechanisms and impact of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1970s on the racial integration of the electrical industry, Moccio highlights the elements unique to the integration (or lack thereof) of women in that field.

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems is a book outlining how virtues can be included in modern ethical analysis. There are multiple ways to apply virtue ethics, or, as the authors like to say, to put virtue ethics "to work." Illustrating the variations are thirteen different authors giving detailed accounts of virtue ethics at work inside schools, hospitals, courtrooms and boardrooms.

Clear Leadership: Sustaining Real Collaboration and Partnership at Work, Revised Edition

I was pleased to find that a book devoted to helping people to communicate effectively and clearly was written very, very clearly. It was not pedantic or condescending; in it, the author seems to genuinely respect his audience.

AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities

Aside from a women’s studies class I took as an undergraduate, of which I remember very little, thoughts on gender and sexuality typically have not taken up much of my time. AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities totally changed my perception on these subjects. As a self-proclaimed tomboy, who happens not to be a lesbian, society is much more accepting of my “ways” than they would be if I were an effeminate man.

Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today

Veteran writer and activist Chris Carlsson’s new book is nothing short of an urban working-class blueprint for change. Drawing on Marxist theory and powerfully deconstructing modern assumptions about class and work, Nowtopia presents fringe utopian ideals as well-reasoned, proactive solutions for how to authentically survive in our struggling society.

Reclaiming Feminist Motherhood

In 2003, _The New York Times Magazine _published “The Opt-Out Revolution,” by Lisa Belkin, a now nearly infamous contribution to the never-ending “mommy wars” collection of work. The cover story asserted that the nation’s most educated career women were “opting out” of their professional lives to become full-time stay-at-home moms.

The Forest for the Trees

The Forest for the Trees details several months in the life of a schoolteacher in Germany who leaves a small town to attempt teaching in a more suburban atmosphere. She arrives in her new life with great hopes for friendships, romance, and touching the lives of children in the high school.

Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant

In Working the Skies, Drew Whitelegg takes the interviews and study of a multitude of flight attendants and creates a readable, enjoyable tale of the perils and possibilities flight attendants face. The book is part psychology, part history and part cultural study with plenty of personal tales from retired and active flight attendants.

The Anti 9-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

Offering variations on the theme of independence + passion + thrift = making it, Goodman combines personal experiences, interviews with women doing it their way, statistics and strategies to inspire and prepare us for better living outside the cube, or inside, if that’s where we currently happen to be. Themes include devoting more time to a pet project, getting a more flexible work schedule, working abroad, finding your dream career, breaking into your dream industry, learning to build a house, fight wildfires and do other unladylike (ahem!), non-secretarial things for a living.
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