2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Change; Become a Winner: Gateway to a New Life by George Boulden is a non-fiction book aimed at people who want to have more meaningful careers. At around 160 pages, the book is relatively short. The author’s goal is to share with working people his long-time expertise in his tested four-step model that allows a person to change from within.
The writer’s knowledge is evident. There is no doubt that George Boulden is very successful in holding business seminars all over the world in order to promote his model to multinational corporations, such as Unilever, Motorola, and ICL. However, expertise in any area of business will not necessarily turn a person into an accomplished writer. There are many content, grammar, spelling, style, and formatting issues in this book.
The chosen topic is rather dry, although the writer does inject several personal anecdotes throughout the text to disrupt the monotony a bit. The book is clearly aimed at business owners and employees, and it focuses on how to achieve job satisfaction and fulfillment at work. Words and phrases such as “communicating with rapport,” “being promoted from a follower to a leader,” “empowering,” “management,” “strategy,” and “facilitating learning” are common within the narrative. These terms are also often used in meetings and written reports in a company.
What really caught my attention, however, was that, while discussing Abraham Maslow’s classical hierarchy of needs, the author claimed that Mother Teresa and Attila the Hun had the same motivational selfish goals in life, even though he recognized that Mother Teresa’s goals were nobler. He said that there is no real difference between the two important historical figures. I strongly disagree. I certainly don’t see Mother Teresa as selfish or greedy. I rather see her as an altruistic saint, which she will forever remain in my heart.
Moving on to grammar, spelling, and formatting issues, this is the very first paragraph in the book:
Generally, the first paragraph is meant to be a short teaser of what is to come in a book: it should grab our attention, pull us in, and keep us glued to the pages. Instead, this initial paragraph almost turned me off from reading any further.If you seeking promotion in your current job or perhaps to find a new job; would you like to run your own business, have a better work-life balance or retire at fifty? This book is for you. It;
There are many such poorly-written sentences throughout the entire work. Commas are added where they should not appear, and they are left out from very obvious locations; semicolons are often used to introduce quotations. Some chapter titles are written in capital letters, while others are written in lowercase letters. Yet other chapters have their letters all mixed up. Paragraphs are cut off randomly with double spacing between the lines. Most subtitles and subheadings are bold. In some chapters they are both italicized and bold, while in some places the formatting is entirely left out.
The author likes to enclose important words in single quotation marks (as per the British style guide); however, many times the left or the right quotation mark is missing. Also most chapters are left aligned, while others are center aligned. I have even found a few paragraphs that were right aligned. All these issues make for some very awkward reading.
Overall, this book is in major need of editing, but it has two main redeeming qualities. At the end of each chapter the author has included exercises that should help us apply the knowledge gained from the lessons to our own lives. These exercises do make the book slightly more interactive. Also from the manual it is evident that the writer really knows his professional trade. As such, I can give Change; Become a Winner: Gateway to a New Life 2 out of 4 stars. A team of good proofreaders, copy editors, and line editors could easily raise this book to 3 or 4 stars. Then I could heartily recommend it to people who want to enter the business world, to those who aim to climb the corporate ladder and get better paying jobs, or to individuals who need useful tips to become successful entrepreneurs.
******
Change; Become a Winner
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like kislany's review? Post a comment saying so!
