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Your comment got me to read the article. But. 1. First, the style is atrocious. I am not a native speaker but the style is circumvoluted, jumping from details
by johnchristopher 5y ago
Your comment got me to read the article. But.
1. First, the style is atrocious. I am not a native speaker but the style is circumvoluted, jumping from details to details. I believe the main idea could have been summarized and exposed clearly in fewer paragraphs ("process of cultural homogenization for its own sake in/through historical American self-help literature" or something).
2. > Well, I will say one thing about the article. It summarily dismisses Stephen Covey's Seven Habits as nothing special, without engaging the content of the book in the slightest, and criticizes Covey for not talking about racism and sexism. If you want this article and its writer in a nutshell, there you go.
Isn't that a stretch ?
> Although Covey’s tract pays no more attention to the harms of racism and sexism than the other works McHugh examines, she finds its controlling agenda tempered by a soft-focus emphasis on “principles,” “proactivity,” and “interdependence.” Such qualities, she asserts, are in short supply in similar works of success literature, introducing a critical element of vulnerability into the usual morale-raising, virtue-forming proceedings: “In interdependence,” she writes, “there was a recognition of individual limitations, even fallibility, in a way that rarely happens in this type of literature.”
It's less a critic of Covey for not talking about racism and sexism than a general observation than all those work of literature are ignoring racism and sexism issues. Most probably because there were fewer outlets to express these issues than there is today.
> And Seven Habits is more worth your time than anything this author will ever say.
You make a bit point out of what is said about Covey's book in the article but seven habits and its relevance for entrepreneurs/businessmen is not the author's subject and its dismissal is more anecdote than central to the point.