Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

Author: Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon
List Price: $26.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0465026079
Publisher: Basic Books (02 October, 2001)
Sales Rank: 52,078
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
Good Learning for Career & HR Professionals!
An excellent read for career and human resource professionals. Written by three very eminently qualified professionals, it provides an in-depth study about professionals and the choices they make. Using illustrations from the medical and journalistic professions, it gives a reader a focused and clear understanding of what good work is all about.


Rating: 5 out of 5
lonely work
I am a special education teacher and bought this book so I could better understand why some teachers refuse to give learning disabled a chance. I wanted to better understand how some teachers forget the commitment they have to the students they serve. Well, I wished I never read the book. I now understand why people are not commited to their jobs and why administrators asked teachers to "fake" paperwork. I felt lonely while reading this book, because I understand clearly that there are very few people willing to have ethics and excellence meet in their job performance. I am one of those few people and it is a lonely place. The book is a bit dry, much like a college text book. Read it slowly with a dictionary by your side.


Rating: 4 out of 5
Good Stuff...depressing as hell !!!
Having worked for America Online 6 years ago (right before that I worked at a restaurant by the murrah building in okc when it was blown up by mcveigh), I feel I have a pretty good perspective on this kind of stuff. Quoting Gasset "The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select...anyone not like everybody runs the risk of being eliminated.."
The book in a sense tells about two types of people. Those who care about others, and those who care about themselves. Unfortunatly in a world where the competitive nature of man always leads to violence (be it physical, or of the subtle, mental sort) the bad will almost always win out. Having lost a number of friends (literally) due to the operant conditioned nature of life today, and through the media forcing kids to be "cool" to fit in (...)
Anyway, the issues presented in this book, which essentially are an argument against Skinner's promotion of "blank slate" minds that are to be conditioned through "experience", are good ones...however, if you truly understand that you can never, ever do enough to combat the hate and the evil that is so prevelant in the world today, you might want to not read this book...however, if you are aloof and like to buy products and watch movies that the critics agree are "explosive" and, if a sequal "twice as explosive as the first", you might find this book interesting...but probably a bit too academic, and will feel that it should be reserved for Intellectuals or whatever...(...), what do i know.

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