Download or read book A Question of Character written by Thomas C. Reeves and published by . This book was released on 1994-03-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No issue is more hotly debated than how, or even if, a politician's private life affects his public competence. In "A Question of Character John F. Kennedy's two lives--public and private--are examined to answer this timely question. Respected historian and biographer Thomas C. Reeves reveals discrepancies between JFK's public persona, which has reached mythic proportions, and his scandalous private behavior. Most illuminating is the constant theme or Joe Kennedy's almost total control of JFK's behavior and politics throughout most of his son's career. "The John Kennedy who emerges from these pages was not a man of good moral character. He was reared not to be good but to win." -- "Los Angeles Times Reeves has provided the most truthful and balanced assessment of John F. Kennedy to date. Written more in sorrow than in anger, "A Question of Character explores the sensitive and difficult question of how people, and history itself, ought to judge the relationship between personal character and national leadership. "From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book Questions of Character written by Joseph Badaracco and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through rich analysis of the main characters in "The Death of a Salesman, The Secret Sharer, The Last Tycoon," and other stories, Badaracco addresses complex issues leaders face, such as the soundness of their vision, their readiness to take on responsibility, the depth of their compassion, and their ability to manage success.
Download or read book Return on Character written by Fred Kiel and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the character of our leaders matter? You may think this question was answered long ago. Countless business authors and analysts have assured us that great leadership demands great character. Time and again, we’ve seen that truth play out, as once-thriving organizations falter and fail under the guidance of leaders behaving badly. Why, then, do so many executives remain skeptical about the true value of leadership character? A winning strategy and a sound business model are what really matter, they argue; character is just the icing on the cake. What’s been missing from this debate is hard evidence: data that shows not only that leadership character matters for organizational success, but how it matters; and concrete evidence that it leads to better business results. Now, in this groundbreaking book, respected leadership researcher, adviser, and author Fred Kiel offers that evidence—solid data that demonstrates the connection between character, leadership excellence, and organizational results. After seven years of rigorous research based on a landmark study of more than 100 CEOs and over 8,000 of their employees’ observations, Kiel’s findings show that leaders of strong character achieved up to five times the ROA for their organizations as did leaders of weak character. Return on Character goes on to reveal: • How leadership character is formed, how it creates value, and how that value spreads throughout the organization • How low-character leaders undermine the success of even the best business plans • How leaders at any level can develop the habits of strong character and “unlearn” the habits of poor character The book also provides a character-building methodology—step-by-step advice and techniques for assessing your own character habits and improving your performance and that of your organization. Return on Character provides the blueprint for building your own leadership character and creating a character-driven organization that achieves superior business results.
Download or read book The Call of Character written by Mari Ruti and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should we feel inadequate for failing to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is such an existential equilibrium realistic or even desirable? Condemning our cultural obsession with cheerfulness and “positive thinking,” Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies, arguing that sometimes the most tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be the most rewarding. Ruti critiques our current search for personal meaning and the pragmatic attempt to normalize human beings’ unruly and idiosyncratic natures. Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. Ruti shows what counts is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, leaving us feeling less “real,” less connected, and unable to metabolize a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.
Download or read book How to be Respectful written by Emily James and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showing respect is very important. But what does that mean? Readers will learn through examples in a fun question and answer format that treating others the way you would want to be treated shows respect.
Download or read book A Matter of Character written by Robin Lee Hatcher and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daphne McKinely has a secret about a nefarious villain featured in a series of dime novels loosely based on local lore.
Download or read book A Question of Character written by Cathy Boeckmann and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Boeckmann explains, this emphasis on character meant that race was not only a thematic concern in the literature of the period but also a generic or formal one as well." "Boeckmann explores the intersections between race and literary history by tracing the language of character through both scientific and literary writing."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Creating a Character written by Moni Yakim and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1993 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor and mime artist Moni Yakim reveals his time-tested techniques and step-by-step exercises for physically evoking a character. Beginning with a chapter on looking inward, Yakim gives exercises on discovering aspects of one's own character. Then he teaches the actor how to identify with qualities outside the self. Finally, he shows how to apply these techniques to 12 classical theatrical roles.
Download or read book Superstar written by Mandy Davis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year! “Lester’s first-person narrative is honest and pure.” —Kirkus (starred review) Perfect for fans of Fish in a Tree and Wonder, this uplifting debut novel from Mandy Davis follows space-obsessed Lester Musselbaum as he experiences the challenges of his first days of public school: making friends, facing bullies, finding his "thing," and accidentally learning of his autism-spectrum diagnosis. Lester’s first days as a fifth grader at Quarry Elementary School are not even a little bit like he thought they would be—the cafeteria is too loud for Lester's ears, there are too many kids, and then there's the bully. Lester was always home-schooled, and now he’s shocked to be stuck in a school where everything just seems wrong. That's until he hears about the science fair, which goes really well for Lester! This is it. The moment where I find out for 100 percent sure that I won. But then things go a bit sideways, and Lester has to find his way back. A touching peek into the life of a sensitive autism-spectrum boy facing the everydayness of elementary school, Superstar testifies that what you can do isn’t nearly as important as who you are. “A lovely, heartfelt narrative about the things we’ve lost, and the things we’ve found again.” —Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honor winner for The Wednesday Wars “I LOVE LESTER.” —Linda Urban, author of Milo Speck, Accidental Agent and A Crooked Kind of Perfect
Download or read book Lack of Character written by John M. Doris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character.
Download or read book Outline written by Rachel Cusk and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years. A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail
Download or read book Character written by Amanda Anderson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.
Download or read book The Quest for Character written by Massimo Pigliucci and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of How to Be a Stoic asks what might be philosophy's ultimate question: can we learn to be better people? Is good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person—and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price. In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it. He blends ancient sources with modern interpretations to give a full picture of the philosophy and cultivation of character, virtue, and personal excellence—what the Greeks called arete. At heart, The Quest for Character isn’t simply about what makes a good leader. Drawing on Socrates as well as his followers among the Stoics, this book gives us lessons perhaps even more crucial: how we can each lead an excellent life.
Download or read book Kudos written by Rachel Cusk and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2018 • Amazon Editors' Top 100 of 2018 Rachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos, a novel of unsettling power. A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as Kudos reaches a profound and beautiful climax. In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.
Download or read book The Road to Character written by David Brooks and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success—“résumé virtues”—and our core principles. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade. Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth. “Joy,” David Brooks writes, “is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.” Praise for The Road to Character “A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story.”—The New York Times Book Review “This profound and eloquent book is written with moral urgency and philosophical elegance.”—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon “A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin.”—The Guardian “Original and eye-opening . . . Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave an idea bigger than the sum of its parts.”—USA Today
Download or read book What Would Your Character Do written by Ph.D., Eric Maisel and published by Writer's Digest Books. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get Inside Your Character's Head &break;&break;Just how well do you know your characters? &break;&break;Test yourself–and your characters–with 30 interactive pop quizzes designed to help you discover exactly what makes your characters tick. &break;&break;Noted author Eric Maisel draws on his technical knowledge of the craft and his background in psychology to show you how to combine character traits, character psychology, and character development to create realistic, memorable, and mutable characters. &break;&break;The 30 real-life scenarios include questions and answers that provide you with a window into your characters' souls. For example: &break;&break; What would motivate your character to tell a lie–a big lie that may have unintended consequences? &break; Is your character the type who would blow the whistle on a corporate cover-up or would she quietly toe the line?&break; How would your character cope with the loss of a parent with whom he was exceptionally close?&break; How likely would your character be to flirt with an attractive stranger in a hotel bar? &break; Is your character the type who would drop everything–and everyone–for a spontaneous road trip? &break;&break;Plus, find out how to develop each scenario further using corresponding prompts and specific psychological insight into areas such as the role friendship plays in a person's mental and physical health, conflict resolution in intimate relationships, and the connection between time-impatience and free-floating hostility. &break;&break;With What Would Your Character Do?, you don't have to guess at your character's responses to the important decisions and unexpected challenges he's sure to encounter in your story. Use and reuse these scenarios on each of your characters until you've got a nuanced, distinct cast that readers will never be able to forget!
Download or read book Amateur Hour written by Lara M. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the impact of presidential character on the popularity, productivity, and ethics of contemporary presidents. Through comparative analyses, author Lara Brown demonstrates that the character of a president’s leadership does not change in office and that the success of future presidents can be evaluated before they step into the White House. She traces the rise of “amateur outsiders,” like Donald Trump, and asserts the need for systemic reform and cultural reassessment of presidential character. Intended for students and scholars of the presidency, this book also holds appeal for general readers who seek understanding of past and future presidential elections.
