BIG BUSINESS – YOUR LIFE WITHIN IT.

By Herbert D. Bissell '29. Nashville,Term: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1974. 108 pp.Soft bound. $1.95.

Struck with how many books about business flood the market and how few treat simple problems a human being must solve, Mr. Bissell speaks out. As corporate vice president, marketing, at Honeywell and earlier a power in N. W. Ayer & Son, advertising, he invites anyone interested to sit down on a log beside him where he will whittle out some homely sayings, nothing fancy, parings- flying where they may.

Entering the complex world of big business, you may need to toughen up, as he did on being graduated from Dartmouth College, in his day somewhat insular. Don't kneel before money as the absolute god, but, rather, stand up straight as a thinking and feeling human being. Don't condemn big business in the full flush of your undergraduate enthusiasm, because it is, you think hidebound, impersonal, and venal. Rarely robots or Machiavellis, leaders are honed by experience. Even presidents of large corporations circulate, open-eyed and open-eared, among newly employed and minor figures, and hold their forefingers up to the winds of change. Button up your lips, for blabbermouths are distrusted. Learn, however, to express yourself gracefully in personal interviews, small conferences, and large conventions. Keep your language clean, for obscenity and profanity indicate a lack of taste and clarity that will demean you. Be courageous about admitting mistakes promptly. RCA waited too long before writing off $250,000,000 and selling what it could to Sperry Rand.

In big business, become without sycophancy attractive and useful to others. Cultivate intellectual inquisitiveness and thus be able to comprehend. Remember what Paul Austin of Coca Cola stated publicly in Business Week: "This company is dedicated to paying its social rent." Mr. Bissell complements him: "Doing business in a free society is a public trust."

This book may strike college and business school graduates and new and seasoned employees of large companies as a homely series of asphorisms about "how to take it" and "how to make it." The language is indeed simple, colloquial, and racy, and the point of view straightforward, tolerant, and sophisticated. Mr. Bissell hopes that it may enable many businessmen and businesswomen to write their own script.