Authors: Hannah Seligson.
Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Citadel
Publication Date: 2007-06-01


Reviews :

    Let's face it--the work world is tough. There are a million other young women out there who do what you do, just as well as you do it. Competition for the best jobs is fierce, office politics are tougher than you thought, and the road to success is not always an easy one.

So how will you handle the pressure of your first real job and climb the ladder to success?

Through interviews with some of the best and brightest businesswomen in the country such as Soledad O'Brien, anchor of CNN's American Morning, and Jill Herzig, executive editor of Glamour magazine, meticulous research, and one-on-one chats with hundreds of New Girls starting out in their careers, New Girl on the Job provides you with all of the information you always wanted to know about workplace success but were afraid to ask. Inside, you'll find valuable tips and information you can put to use right away:

Assistantized--How not to get stuck with all the administrative tasks
The Sweet Spot--Finding the middle ground between bitch and doormat
It's Just Business--How to develop the ultimate office tool--a thick skin
Mistakes Happen--How to deal with them when they do
Perpetual Perfectionist--Why staying late at the office could sabotage your career...

Authors: Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. Alison Maitland.
Hardcover, 376 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Publication Date: 2008-03-28


Reviews :

    Never before has there been such a confluence of international attention to the economic importance of women and the need for policies to enable them to fulfil their potential. The position of women - as employees, consumers and leaders - is seen as a measure of health, maturity and economic viability.

Why Women Mean Business takes the economic arguments for change to the heart of the corporate world. This powerful new book analyses the opportunities available to companies that really understand what motivates women in the workplace and the marketplace. Find out how companies that learn to adapt to women will be better able to respond to the challenge of an ageing workforce and the demands of the next generation of knowledge workers. The authors compare policies and approaches in countries around the world, that offer surprising and envious results.

The optimisation of women’s talents will boost the bottom line. Taking action to achieve this will require sustained courage and conviction from today’s corporate leaders. Reading Why Women Mean Business will be an important first step....

Authors: Faith Popcorn.
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
Publication Date: 2001-06-13


Reviews :

    190 million female consumers . . . $4.4 trillion in buying power . . . one book -- the national bestseller now in paperback and newly revised -- that tells you how to reach them.

She knows business. She knows women. And she definitely knows better than anyone on Madison Avenue how to bring them together. Faith Popcorn, America's leading trend forecaster, shows that no one can succeed in business or successfully start one without understanding how to market to women....

Authors: Marcelle Langan DiFalco. Jocelyn Greenky Herz.
Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Fireside
Publication Date: 2004-12-28


Reviews :

    EVERY WORKING WOMAN NEEDS A BIG SISTER

In just one eight-hour day, a working woman can get more twisted up than panty hose in the spin cycle. The Big Sister's Guide to the World of Work will straighten her out. This tell-it-like-it-is handbook gives every working woman the tools for facing the forces of evil and opportunity in corporate America, including how to:

• Sidestep the classic mistakes women make in a new job

• Avoid getting tangled up in office politics

• Banish the seven habits that make you look small

• Get your boss on your side (without kissing up)

Once entry-level know-nothings who rose to the top of the corporate ranks, DiFalco and Herz have been the go-to big sisters for hundreds of women who were mystified and mortified at the office. Now you can arm yourself with the authors' straight-shooting advice. Uninhibited and fiercely wise -- like the very best big sisters -- they are the mentors every working woman needs.

...

Authors: Mary Wells Lawrence.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 2002-05-07
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    One of advertising’s all-time greats, Mary Wells Lawrence, shows us the American ad world from the 1950s through the 1980s in all its brilliance, excitement, fun and craziness.

She captures the thrill of being a young copywriter in the 1960s at Doyle Dane Bernbach, working for the dazzling, revolutionary Bill Bernbach (“There was something volcanic [about him] . . . a little like being in the company of Mao or Che or the young Fidel”); how he took on a car rental firm that barely existed, announced to the world it was Number Two and therefore it tried harder—and overnight made the unknown Avis second only to the mighty Hertz; how Bernbach’s “Think Small” campaign made big car–obsessed America fall in love with the unlikely Volkswagen; how his Polaroid ads explained the mysterious instant camera to the public without saying a word.

She writes about leaving Doyle Dane Bernbach (for seven years her Heaven on earth) for a new ad company, and how she made it her own, producing the simple and unforgettable “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz” Alka-Seltzer commercial by getting rid of the cartoon tablet, Speedy, and creating a frothy, luminous commercial composed of nothing but two Alka-Seltzers dropping into a crystal glass of water; how she gave Braniff Airways brilliant visibility by painting its airplanes fresh, vivid colors—and then fell in love with and married the head of the company.

She writes about her campaign for the French tourist bureau and how she used a single image—a country man on a bicycle—that today is still the symbol of France’s rural life . . . how she traveled the world for Betty Crocker’s casserole dishes, how she brought theatricality and fantasy to TV advertising.

She tells how she started Wells Rich Greene and ran it like a movie studio. She writes about the clients and the campaigns . . . how she created a new line of cosmetics—Love—for a conservative drug company (it became one of the most successful cosmetics launches in history) . . . how she helped save American Motors from bankruptcy, redesigned its cars and put together an ad campaign that did the unthinkable—compared its unknown Javelin with Ford’s beloved Mustang . . . how Midas was “Midasized”. . . how, when thousands of Ford dealers had gone out of business, the Ford ads focused
not on Ford’s cars but on the dedication of its workers, with the slogan “Quality is Job One”; how she made New York the place to be when it was seen as a sinking ship, with the slogan “I Love New York.”

She writes about taking Wells Rich Greene public and how she became the first woman CEO of a company on the New York Stock Exchange . . . how she made a movie with the last of the Hollywood moguls, Jack Warner. She tells how she transformed a dilapidated, once-famous villa, La Fiorentina, at Cap Ferrat (a Nazi stronghold during the war) into a Mediterranean Eden, and writes about her battle with cancer. She talks about her refusal to globalize Wells Rich Greene and her decision, finally, to sell the company she’d built into the fastest-growing ad agency in history, and what happened to it afterward.

Here is the extraordinary story of how Mary Wells Lawrence lived her life in advertising—helped shape her profession, was shaped by it and left her mark on it....

    A colorful mix of historical narrative, revealing personal memoir, and sassy industry tell-all, A Big Life in Advertising offers up Mary Wells Lawrence's bubbling take on life, love, and plugging products. Well, spills it into your lap, actually. Spanning four decades in the world of advertising and the life of one of its star players, A Big Life oozes with juicy details and insider revelations.

After an inspiring stint as one of the infamous Bill Bernbach's protégés, Lawrence really began her career at Jack Tinker & Partners, revolutionizing the images of such brands as Alka-Seltzer and Braniff Airways. But when denied the title of president, Lawrence "let loose the bear," as she puts it, and with the creative team of Stewart Greene and Dick Rich, set up shop as Wells Rich Greene. Over the course of the next quarter century, Lawrence and her cast of characters "made theatre out of the advertising business," giving brands like Benson & Hedges, American Motors, TWA, Midas, and Procter & Gamble's Gleem toothpaste their turn on the stage of stardom. While Lawrence's story is less about her agency's creative work and more about her impressions of and interactions with virtually everyone who was anyone in the advertising world of the '70s and '80s, she does include glimpses into her own childhood, life as a mother, and battles with cancer, adding a touch of reality to an otherwise glittering world. Some readers may feel Lawrence's opinion of her own beauty and charm plays too prominent a role in her reminiscing, but she was, after all, an adventurous queen bee in a glamorous world. Her chatty style of writing, and her ebullient enthusiasm for all she has experienced and accomplished, make this book read more like a novel than a memoir. It's an entertaining, fast-paced tale of a big star's big life. --S. Ketchum ...

Authors: Ellen Bravo.
Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Publication Date: 2007-04-01


Reviews :

   

"Please, please, please. All working women must read this book! Ellen Bravo not only vividly exposes workplace inequities, she gives real-life solutions, picking up where my film 9 to 5 left off."-Jane Fonda

Enough about "breaking the glass ceiling." Here are blueprints for a redesign of the entire building, ground up, to benefit women and men-and even the bottom line.

The feisty humor of Molly Ivins and the journalistic flair of Barbara Ehrenreich meet when longtime labor activist Ellen Bravo relates stories from business and government and women's testimonies from offices, assembly lines, hospitals, and schools. Bravo unmasks the patronizing, trivializing, and minimizing tactics employed by "the big boys" and their surrogates: They portray feminism as women against men, and they dismiss as outrageous demands for pay equity, family leave, and flex time. Practical tips on everything from dealing with a sexual harasser to getting family members to share chores (and build equal relationships) enliven many chapters.

Bravo argues for feminism as a system of beliefs, laws, and practices that fully values women and work associated with women, while detailing activist strategies to achieve a society where everybody-women and men-reach their potential.

A former director of 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women, and a recipient of a Women of Vision Award from the Ms. Foundation, Ellen Bravo lectures nationwide and teaches women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She wrote The Job/Family Challenge: A 9to5 Guide (Not for Women Only) and is the co-authored The 9to5 Guide To Combating Sexual Harassment.

...

Authors: Wendy Sachs.
Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication Date: 2006-03-06


Reviews :

    "A book that many mothers...might find to be a life-saver. Or, more accurately, a sanity-saver." (USA Today)

Yes, some women are opting out of their careers, taking an "off-ramp," and heading home to raise their babies. But millions of us cannot afford to make that choice. And millions more choose to work because we love our careers. So how are women holding on to financially necessary or stimulating and rewarding careers and still being engaged mothers?

Wendy Sachs, journalist and mother of two, set out to find what's really happening at the intersection of motherhood and work today. Based on her in-depth interviews with mothers from diverse backgrounds, How She Really Does It explores the creative and courageous ways in which stay-at- work moms are making it happen.

Here are the moms next door-as well as lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, fashion designers, journalists, and television personalities-who are navigating the everyday work/home conflicts, and, yes, dealing with the guilt. Through it all, they are empowered career women and caring, present mothers.

A modern working woman's survival guide, How She Really Does It will give you hope that even if you can't have it all, you can have at least some of it all of the time....

Authors: Cyndi Maxey. Kevin E. O'Connor.
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: 2008-11-11


Reviews :

    ...

Authors: Miriam Peskowitz.
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Seal Press
Publication Date: 2005-03-10


Reviews :

    The media, from Dr. Phil to the New York Times Magazine, is adamant that there is no love lost between working parents and those who stay home with their children, each fighting an ideological and economic war based on what they think is best for their children. Yet in reality, as Miriam Peskowitz powerfully discloses, parents don't want to fight one another at all; they simply want more options. Moreover, the very sides in this debate don't exist: one third of all mothers work part-time, falling into the vast abyss between full-time careerist and at-home mommy. How does the corporate climate in America force women to claim either a career or a family at any given time? Are the choices women are making—to either adjust careers, "carousel" in and out of the workplace, or quit altogether—really choices at all? And how do we expand the definition of productive worker to include an engaged parent? These questions and more are answered and explored in this moving and convincing treatise on the new-century collision between work and mothering....

Authors: Leslie Morgan Steiner.
Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication Date: 2007-02-27


Reviews :

    With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of a woman’s life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not only divides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individual mothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there. As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother of three, she has lived and breathed every side of the “mommy wars.” Rather than just watch the battles rage, Steiner decided to do something about it. She commissioned twenty-six outspoken mothers to write about their lives, their families, and the choices that have worked for them. The result is a frank, surprising, and utterly refreshing look at American motherhood.

Ranging in age from twenty-five to seventy-two and scattered across the country from New Hampshire to California, these mothers reflect the full spectrum of lifestyle choices. Women who have been home with the kids from day one, moms who shuttle from full-time office jobs to part-time at-home work, hard-driving executives who put in seventy-hour-plus weeks: they all get a turn. The one thing these women have in common, aside from having kids, is that they’re all terrific writers.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley vividly recounts how her generation stormed the American workplace–only to take refuge at home when the workplace drove them out. Lizzie McGuire creator Terri Minsky describes what it felt like to hear her kids scream “I hope you never come back!” when she flew to L.A. to launch the show that made her career. Susan Cheever, novelist, biographer, and New York Newsday columnist, reports on the furious battles between the stroller pushers and the briefcase bearers on the streets of Manhattan. Lois R. Shea traded the journalistic fast track for a house in the country where she could raise her daughter in peace. Ann Misiaszek Sarnoff, chief operating officer of the Women’s National Basketball Association, argues fiercely that you can combine ambition and motherhood–and have a blast in the process.

Candid, engaging, by turns unflinchingly honest and painfully funny, the essays collected here offer an astonishingly intimate portrait of the state of motherhood today. Mommy Wars is a book by and for and about the real experts on motherhood and hard work: the women at home, in the office, on the job every day of their lives.


From the Hardcover edition....