Agencies

The American public has never been told the real truth about our involvement in Vietnam. This book is very revealing. I enjoyed it and recommend Jude's second book "Traitor in White Laces".

It's hard to believe Nancy Rainford hasn't written more books. Perhaps a humorous novel about her business? The book flows with the ease of a best selling novel!

5 stars to this one!

Marsha Marks

The book is not just a primer on the Hollywood protocol and pecking order, but "How to Agent Your Agent" goes into such wonderful detail so as to demystify how an actor should handle his/her agent. So many actors are constantly in a quandry of how to handle a situation with their agents, or they are downright dissatisfied with their agents. This book helps an actor to define what you have control over and what you can change. Years of experience are in this book to help keep actors from making mistakes when it comes representation.

Thank you, Ms. Rainford, for telling it like it is (and being such a great storyteller).

The book continues its humorous backdrop as Precious finds herself up against an experienced male competitor who opens the Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency. The competitor proves to be very annoying to Precious, and she struggles to maintain her optimism in the face of this new trial.

With Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni back working energetically at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mma. Makutsi finds herself dissatisfied. She's really operating as a secretary to both companies rather than as an assistant detective and acting manager, as she had done before. When a new client shows up and insists on speaking with Precious alone, Mma. Makutsi's unhappiness grows. But she shakes herself off, and finds a new opportunity in establishing The Kalahari Typing School for Men, the most unique educational establishment you will probably ever read about.

Precious deals with two client cases . . . neither of which is really a mystery in the normal literary sense. But deciding how to represent her clients' best interests provides weighty challenges of Biblical proportions.

I was a little disappointed in the book, though. Unlike the earlier three books, it lacks the powerful presence of wild Africa to add character and spice. Increasingly, I felt like I was reading just another comic novel about a woman who is trying to juggle all of the balls at once without dropping one. While that is certainly entertaining, this book lacked the uniqueness that made the other books such continuing and pleasant surprises.

As I finished the book, I thought about the special relationship between novelists and their readers. When a novelist establishes a character and a setting for a series of novels, readers expect that what makes that character and setting precious to them will continue. When a book attempts to go off in a new direction, readers should be glad of the author's willingness to experiment. But I do think that the author should provide a valuable substitute if precious elements are left behind. For example, if this novel had been set in an intriguing new locale because Precious had to move, the pleasure of learning about that locale would have made the book's switch in direction worthwhile.

Novelists, keep your implicit promises to your readers!

Mma Ramotswe (in traditional Botswana culture, honorifics are always used; it seems rude not to do so in the review as well) has had a tough life: married to an abusive jazz musician, she loses her baby and then her beloved father. But she finds her vocation: she sets up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and is soon attracting clients. She also acquires a fiancé, garage owner Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, two orphans, and a sidekick, Mma Makutsi, who received a grade of 97 percent on her exams at the Botswana Secretarial College. You don't have to be familiar with the first three books to follow the action in KALAHARI --- McCall Smith is careful to supply context for the first-time reader --- but I think it's better to discover them in order. Not only do you gradually develop a sense of Mma Ramotswe and her life on Zebra Drive (yep, that's the name of her street), but you also become deeply fond of Botswana (this is important since, to the average Westerner, Africa is still a "dark" --- that is, unknown --- continent). These wise, charming books leave you feeling washed clean and peaceful, with an expanded sense of humanity.

Although KALAHARI and the other books are technically mysteries, plot is not the main thing here. There are interlocking events --- a man across town opens a new detective agency; Mma Makutsi starts a typing school for men; Mma Ramotswe solves a case or two --- but there is little real tension or suspense. What keeps you reading is the wonderful writing: pure, economical, funny, utterly lacking in condescension. The evocation of Botswana is often lyrical (its quiet roads, its ubiquitous cattle). Sometimes the stories seem fable-like, as if McCall Smith is telling them around a campfire in the deep African night. This impression is reinforced by the repetition of certain phrases. Mma Ramotswe has a "tiny white van" and is "traditionally built." She believes in "the old Botswana morality" --- a phrase that covers everything from knocking and calling out "Ko Ko" before you enter someone's house to the deeper sense of courtesy and integrity that is being overwhelmed by modern life.

It is one of the many ironies of this wonderful book that Mma Ramotswe and her cohorts, despite their professed yearning for traditional values, are actually the smartest, most progressive people around. Because they are authentic and honest and guided by common sense rather than greed or pride, they make phony modernists like the proprietor of the rival Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency look like idiots (the scene in which Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi pay him a visit is priceless). Indeed, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN, more than the others in the series, is very much occupied with gender; it has a feminist streak a mile wide.

Consider the characters McCall Smith gives us: the entrepreneurial Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi; the imposing head of the orphan farm, Mma Potokwani, who wangles free products and services from everyone ("It would take a degree of courage that few possessed to turn [her] down"); Mma Tsolamosese, whose daughter has died of AIDS and who is caring for her doomed grandchild with dignity and compassion; and Mma Boko, who is head of a local branch of the Botswana Rural Women's Association but refuses to run for office because "all [men] do is talk about money and roads and things like that. ... We women have more important things to talk about."

With sly humor and wry tolerance, the novel captures that conspiratorial sense among women --- in any culture --- that men are not quite up to their standards (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni being the exception, of course): "The trouble with men," muses Mma Ramotswe, "was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. ... That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example. ..." Or Mma Makutsi, commenting on the essays written by her typing-school students: "All of life seemed to be laid out before her: mothers, wives, football teams, ambitions at work, cherished motor cars; everything that men liked." And when Mma Ramotswe says her foster son is going through "a difficult patch," a friend replies dryly: "Boys do go through times like that. It can last for fifty years."

McCall Smith, it turns out, was born in what is now Zimbabwe (then called Southern Rhodesia) and taught law at the University of Botswana, but those facts alone hardly explain his astounding ability to enter the soul of a woman as well as the soul of Africa. He, like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, must be one of the exceptions, a good man. He is certainly an imaginative and observant one. Somehow he manages to communicate the specific feel and spirit of Botswana while also creating characters that transcend the barriers of geography, culture, and gender.

McCall Smith is writing a fifth Precious Ramotswe book, according to his publisher, and has started a new series featuring another lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie (Scottish father, American mother). I can't wait.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

If you intend to navigate upon the ocean, out of sight of land, using only celestial bodies as your "lighthouses," there are three absolute necessities: a sextant (or other means of getting the exact altitude of the sighted body); a nautical almanac or ephemeris, preferably the current issue (or a considerable ability with spherical trigonometry and an encyclopedic knowledge of the movement of celestial bodies--particularly the one you are using); and an accurate timepiece set to, or correctible to, Greenwich meridian time (Coordinated Universal Time).

Given those things, and some paper and a pencil--and ideally, a chart and a few simple instruments, like a pair of dividers or compasses, a straightedge and perhaps a set of parallel rules or a pair of triangles, you should do very well--provided that you also know how to use all of the above.

With American Practical Navigator, you can find the knowledge you need to use the above tools. It's all in there.

It is one of the textbooks used by the United States Naval Academy to teach celestial navigation, as well as the United States Power Squadrons. I am a full certificate member of the latter.

American Practical Navigator is not an essential book. There are other texts that are useful in learning celestial navigation; but, it is by far the best.

Nathaniel Bowditch, the original author of the American Practical Navigator, was born in 1773, in Salem, Mass. He sailed as a ship's master, and worked as a cooper and ship's chandler, but his all-consuming interest was in mathematics. He learned French, Spanish, German, Latin and Greek in order to absorb the discoveries of others, and at the age of 16 was reading Newton's 'Principia,' translating it from Latin--and he found errors. He later published his own findings, and they were accepted. He wrote his first almanac at the age of 15. He developed an new, simplified method of determining lunar distance, and on his voyages began to find errors in John Moore's 'The Practical Navigator,' the leading navigational text. The rest, as they say, is history.

The current American Practical Navigator, Nav Pub. No. 9, published by the Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic Center, is in two volumes.

Any serious student of celestial navigation will want a copy.

Another volume, similarly useful, and a good adjunct to your library, will be 'Dutton's Navigation & Piloting.'

With these two volumes, and the current Nautical Almanac and your instruments, the world's seas become your thoroughfare.

Joseph Pierre, N
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

In Steel's eyes, the most effective advertising involves consumers in two critical areas; one, consumers must take part in the development of communication and two, consumers must be involved in the communication itself. Simply put, creating dialogue with consumers will allow advertisers to know exactly what consumers actually want in a brand and product, and consumers should not be told what to think, but they should be given persuasive facts and allowed to make up their own minds.

As Director of Account Planning and Vice Chairman for by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, Steel has helped create several consumer-centric campaigns such as the "Got Milk" campaign for the California Fluid Milk Processors Advisory Board and the "See What Develops" campaign for the Polaroid Corporation. Steel has also planned successful campaigns for the Northern California Honda Dealers Advertising Association, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Chevy's Mexican Restaurants. Each of these advertising campaigns are described in great detail and serve as wonderful examples of how Steel's consumer focused philosophy of performing comprehensive research or even "eaves-dropping" on consumers helps breed advertising success.

Steel also makes excellent points by including the opinions of some of the most influential fathers of modern advertising. Ad pioneers such as Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Rich Silverstein, Stanley Pollet, and Jay Chiat each appear throughout the book via quotes or clever anecdotes Although these admen's opinions may not be considered entirely precise and applicable by today's standards, Steel uses each person's suggestions to clearly illustrate points related to successful account planning.

Lastly, the four keys to what makes a successful account planner are absolutely classic. Steel's advice that great account planners should be able to provide important information necessary to make informed decisions, should be able to spend more time listening than talking, should possess a chameleonesque quality that fosters unique relationships with different types of people, and in true humorous Steel fashion he sums up the characteristics with, great account planners should simply "have something weird about them!" So even if we don't all dream of planning the next award winning ad campaign, at least we know in some "weird" way we're one-quarter of the way there.

Steele's approach is rare in the advertising world for several reasons: it shows humility and common sense, honors listening to the consumer with imagination, acknowledges the importance of creative quality, is mercifully free of self-promotion, and states the limits of account planning (sometimes there are simply no insights to be found).

While this is not a "how-to" book, I particularly enjoyed some of the tools and tactics: asking focus group participants to go weeks without milk and report back on what they had missed; asking drivers to fill in a thought balloon when they see the driver of a particular brand of car.

When I was done reading the book I felt as if I had just had a witty and interesting conversation with an intelligent and insightful person. I have been sharing the book with my advertising partners ever since.

A great book about communication planning written by Jon Steel, the Brit who heads account planning for Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Steel and his agency are best known for developing the "got milk?" campaign.

Truth, Lies & Advertising describes the process of gathering consumer insights and turning them into potent communications.

It offers great advice about developing advertising objectives, using consumer research, and working with creative people.

Steel writes with enthusiasm and sympathy for the creative process, but he's also savvy about business realities and committed to results.

If you've ever struggled to reconcile the art of creative with the science of business, this book should interest you.

Precious Ramotswe runs a detective agency in Gabarone, the capital of Botswana. She's a "traditionally built" woman with traditional values, too. She's also got a very modern job, working as a detective in Africa, and investigating things. At the beginning of this book, she's accepted the marriage proposal of Mr. J.L.B Matekoni, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and there are many complications that ensue, especially when some orphans are adopted into the family.

One of the writing tricks that the author uses to give the story quaintness is his use of names. You only read Precious Ramotswe's first name once or twice per book. Instead she's referred to as Mma Ramotswe, the Mma apparently being Mrs. in Botswana. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is never referred to as anything else, anywhere in the book, and their respective businesses, the No.1 Ladies's Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, are both only referred to by their full names. The result is a sort of quaint pride in accomplishment, tempered with a slightly ridiculous feeling to things. After all, there aren't *two* ladies' detective agencies in Botswana.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will read the third one soon. The fourth I may wait for paperback (or I may not). But this one's definitely worth the price of admission.

Tears of the Giraffe isn't so much a sequel as a continuation of the events in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. As that book ended, Mma Ramatswe accepted the proposal of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. In Tears of the Giraffe, the couple decides in which of their houses they will live, picks out a ring and decides about having children. Each event has its unexpected twists . . . including an attempt by Mr Matekoni's maid to derail the marriage.

There is less happening at the detective agency than in the prior story. This book involves solving only two mysteries, a wandering wife and a missing son. Mma Ramatswe learns that her able secretary wants to become a detective, and the savvy head of the agency tries out Mma Makutsi's talents with encouraging results.

Both story lines focus on questions of right and wrong. As a prospective spouse, what are the right reactions to one's fiancé or fiancée? As a detective, how much may one do wrong to avoid greater wrongs? To one's community, what is owed? To one's employees, what opportunities should be opened? In each case, the suggestion is that all responsibilities must be borne . . . and borne bravely . . . but in a way that is tempered with love for one's fellow people.

As with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Africa itself plays a role stronger than any single character in defining what is thought and done. The strong and distinct atmosphere makes the book more enchanting to those who do not know Africa.

The story is strengthened by alternating narrators among many different characters and using lots of dialogue so that each part of the novel is vivid and varied. It's as though six or seven almost unconnected short stories were woven together into a seamless novel. It's an impressive accomplishment.

As I finished the book, I wondered how much better off we all would be if we each took a strong responsibility for all those we meet and touch.