Adam Morgan

It is a decent rather than definitive biography of a woman, who happened to be a lesbian, who ran her own publishing company, who employ other women, and who took on the "established" publishing world by serialising Joyce's "Ulyssses" much to the chagrin of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It would be for this alone, that Margaret would be demonised and arrested for obscenity - resulting in her standing trial in 1921 with co-publisher, Jane Heap.

Morgan's book takes us show more through Margaret's earlier life - childhood, her self-emancipation from her parents, her work in non-traditional roles, including reviewing books, before establishing her own publishing company - and all the trials and errors associated with each decision and action.

Then the obscenity trial is covered - rather too briefly for my liking - before we travel with Margaret out of the USA and onto Continental Europe where her life is a little sketchy at best. Powering through the 1930s in rather jumbled narrative - quite possibly due to the number of people introduced and the required explanations as to their associations / connections - we jump to the final years of Margaret's life.

For a woman at the forefront of a major publishing controversy, I felt there were times when this fell a little flat. Whether this was due to a lack of sources or access to sources, I cannot tell but I was looking for slightly more than a wikipedia entry, especially with regards to the trial component.

Look, overall, it is a great introduction to a woman whose lasting legacy was the promotion of "serious literature" in an era and to a society marked by conservative moral and literary tastes. show less

Limits lead to invention. They have to be framed in a meaningful that creates a challenge to a worthy aspiration. Within that context, people - individuals and teams - get creative at coming up with breakthrough solutions. This book offers plenty of examples where others have done this to become rock stars, race winners, and market leaders. It has useful examples and then shows a formula for doing the same. So much of this technique is about having right framing, such as seeing abundance show more instead of scarcity. The can-if methodology is a particularly practical way of sparking different types of solutions. In every constraint, there is a strength that can be leveraged. show less

Completely inspiring. Again, someone else I've been lucky enough to meet in the course of my career. Read anything Adam writes