Off the Shelf
AT the end of World War II, Carlo Tabalujan decided to go into business in Jakarta, starting out with a rented desk and a telephone. The 22-year-old, separated from his family during the war, had survived the Japanese occupation by taking odd jobs and with the help of school friends. With the end of hostilities, it was time to take the fresh opportunities offered in newly-independent Indonesia.
Over the past five decades he has done just that, becoming a successful entrepreneur with a number of enterprises to his name and joint ventures with Western partners. In Fifty Years of Business in Indonesia (Pentland Press $255), Tabalujan, together with Richard Tallboys, looks back over his life and times. He records the experiences of an ordinary Indonesian during the war years, the trials and rewards of the republic's commercial world, his own business philosophy and the cultural differences that come into play when tackling projects with overseas business people.
Risky Business by Elizabeth Luessenhop and Martin Mayer (Scribner $250) paddles back into the troubled waters surrounding Lloyd's of London in the 1980s to offer a view of the disaster from an American investor's perspective. Luessenhop charts the effects of those hard times when thousands of people suddenly found themselves faced with paying out vast sums instead of earning them.
Charles Handy, author of the well-received business work, The Empty Raincoat, ventures into the corporate future in Beyond Certainty (Hutchinson $155).
Subtitled 'The Changing World of Organisations', he offers 35 short pieces, written over the past five years, which examine how enterprises will alter in the years ahead and how independence and freedom for the workforce will play a key role in the new order.
Nature's Keepers, by Stephen Budiansky (Free Press $250) looks at environmental policies and the thinking which lies behind them. Putting up 'keep out' signs to mankind to preserve the natural world is creating more problems than solutions, he suggests. Instead the new science of nature management should be applied. This uses mathematical relationships to examine how ecosystems work and how best to safeguard them.
Another in the rapidly-expanding series of special forces' titles is upon us in the form of SAS Gulf Warriors (Simon & Schuster $289). Military specialist Steve Crawford sets out to reveal the full extent of the SAS' exploits in the war, not just one-off expeditions. As usual, it was formerly all top secret.
Here's a stranger in our midst in the 1990s: a healthy family. Dr Robin Skynner, co-author with actor John Cleese of Families and How to Survive Them, insists there is such a thing and in Family Matters (Methuen $255) shows us how to create one. The book, which stems from a collection of previously published newspaper articles, deals with emotional dependency, roles within the family and the generation gap, among others.
Too Damn Rich (Little Brown $289) is not a title likely to be chosen by anyone writing a book in Hong Kong but for Judith Gould it will do nicely for her blockbuster set against the backdrop of the international auction scene. Three women from different backgrounds are drawn into intrigue, and then danger, at a top auction house, leading them to ponder on the price of the good life.
