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How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (Audio CD)
by Michael Gates Gill
| Category:
Life and work challenges, Journey of life, Meaning and happiness, Second life |
| Market price: ¥ 378.00
MSL price:
¥ 348.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Engaging, candid and fun, the author reminds us that our attitude determines our altitude and that it's never too late to try for a second chance at life. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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Publishers Weekly, USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill grew up meeting the likes of Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. A Yale education led to a job at prestigious J. Walter Thompson Advertising. But at 63, the younger Gill's sweet life has gone sour. Long fired from JWT, his own business is collapsing and an ill-advised affair has resulted in a new son and a divorce. At this low point, and in need of health insurance for a just diagnosed brain tumor, Gill fills out an application for Starbucks and is assigned to the store on 93rd and Broadway in New York City, staffed primarily by African-Americans. Working as a barista, Gill, who is white, gets an education in race relations and the life of a working class Joe . Gill certainly has a story to tell, but his narrative is flooded with saccharine flashbacks, when it could have detailed how his very different, much younger colleagues, especially his endearing 28-year-old manager, Crystal Thompson, came to accept him. The book reads too much like an employee handbook, as Gill details his duties or explains how the company chooses its coffee. Gill's devotion to the superchain has obviously changed his life for the better, but that same devotion makes for a repetitive, unsatisfying read. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
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Booklist, USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
"Starred Review" Yale graduate, prosperous ad exec: Gill has it all. Then he turns 60 and finds himself precipitously bounced from his job and saddled with the triple threats of a ruined marriage, an unexpected newborn, and a brain tumor.
Despairing at the prospect of looming poverty, he stops at a Manhattan Starbucks to comfort himself with a latte. By chance he sits down next to Crystal, a young African American woman recruiting new workers for the coffee giant, and she offers him a job. Almost as an act of desperation, he accepts, and he dons the uniform of a barista-in-training at an Upper West Side Starbucks. This son of privilege who had hobnobbed with Queen Elizabeth, T. S. Eliot, and Jackie Onassis, now keeps daily company with a diverse crew of brash young New Yorkers for whom Starbucks' progressive employee benefits and demanding, inspiring standards of public service offer hope. Gill starts at the bottom, cleaning the bathroom, and he has trouble mastering the cash register. Over the months he learns to deeply respect Crystal, to appreciate the mutual support of his coworkers, and to genuinely cherish the passing parade of customers, each unique. To his own astonishment, he realizes that he actually looks forward joyfully to every hectic, exhausting workday. Other corporate giants can only envy the sheer goodwill that this memoir will inevitably generate for Starbucks. What a read. Knoblauch, Mark
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Wayne Dyer (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
A great lesson in finding your highest self in the unlikeliest of places - proof positive that there is no way to happiness - rather, happiness is the way.
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Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The Seeds of Greatness , USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
I like my Starbucks, but I loved this book. It hit me emotionally and intellectually, right in the gut. The message, what the world needs to embrace most, made my cup runneth over! |
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Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, Dark Nights of the Soul, and The Worth of Our Work , USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
How Starbucks Saved My Life is based on the simple idea that down-to-earth, humbling labor can help you re-orient your values and priorities and give you new life. It will speak to anyone in need of radical surgery on their worldview, and that includes most of us. Sit down with a cup of coffee and this book and entertain yourself toward enlightenment. |
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Edward (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
This is a wonderful heartwarming and from the heart book about someone who rose to the top of his profession at the expense of family values and then suddenly found himself "let go" and divorced. It chronicles his mistakes and how in his 60's he found himself accepting a job at Starbucks which totally transformed his view of life as to what is most important. This book is an easy read. |
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Nancy (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
This was a fascinating story . I have never been a Starbucks fan but after reading this, I have more respect for Starbucks and the author of this book. It took him a long time to grow up but he finally found the important things in life. I shall pass my copy on to my adult children who sometimes seem too caught up in their quest for success. |
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Suchit (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
It is such an amazing book - surely more for the described life of Mr. Michael Gates Gill. What really impresses me is the very simplistic language used in the book - I did not have to look into the dictionary even once while reading the book and I don't have one of those top of the line vocabs. I felt so engrossed in this very visually perceptible book. The book has been very inspirational and walking through the later life of Mr.Gill I realized there are so many smaller aspects of life which hold such an huge importance. It also made me feel really great entering starbucks on each occasion henceforth and interact more pleasantly with the 'Partners'. |
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D. Kyne (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
A simple story in simple language. Pretty much a schmaltz ball of heartfelt uplift. I read the book because I've been 'that guy' and I've known others who were "that guy': a man in post financial and marital meltdown on the brink of going under altogether. This is not a book for "literature" critics or cynics with well honed critical faculties but it's a good story and at heart probably a pretty true one. |
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Coach (MSL quote), USA
<2007-12-26 00:00>
Facing many questions about my own career direction without any clear sense of how to get the momentum going at age 47 and supplementing my part-time salary by subbing at local schools, I found Michael Gill's book extremely moving. I can forgive him for making Starbucks seems like an idyllic island in an often cruel world.
His true greatness is sharing his loneliness, his fears (of not making it and of being fired), his encounters with friends and acquaintances from his former life, his drive to succeed and master new challenges at age 63, and his almost singlehanded pursuit of the approval and acceptance by his co-workers. What is most special about this book is Michael, in the midst of emptiness and desperation, takes the first small step to reverse the many crises in his life, and focuses on each successive small step one at a time. This is such a profound lesson in how to dig oneself out of a career or existential crisis. Take small steps to change the karma, and along the way, if you are able to be honest with yourself and be in touch with yourself, good things begin to happen to you, and your relationships strengthen and become more profound. Above everything else, you also become a much better human being. I found this book extremely touching and want to thank Michael for sharing his story with us. |
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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