from previous page.... and business plans, also stuff like invoices, billing, and the whole debate about how much one should charge. Porten also launches into marketing, networking, and making that sale. It’s all 101 kind of stuff, all useful, and written to be accessible to the general reader and potential business failure. The tone is never insulting or conde- scending. Porten pulls it off because he sounds like a peer, and an astute one. Other good points about Twentysomething are Porten’s wit, and his realistic advice about financing (sell that comic book/star trek doll collec- tion/clip coupons, and hang out at all- you-can-eat-pizZa-parlours.) Porten is also, thankfully, lacking obnoxious politics; he is a liberal democrat and not some uber freemarket thug. | can relate to his persona; Porten is some- one who lived on Kraft dinner and made student loan payments while managing to build up an Apple compu- ter and internet consulting business. He also suffered through an unspeci- fied personal tragedy. If you are interested in self employ- ment in our brave new world, read this book. Just be certain to wrap the cover in a brown bag while in public. OK, and on to the next level. Maybe you’ve got your own business, maybe a few customers. How do you make your business grow and survive? “Marketing” is the hushed whisper from the corner. And who is speaking? Jay Levinson, a marketing whiz who has published eight books in his guerrilla marketing series. “Guerrilla at home” attacks classic marketing theory: you don’t need expensive ad-budgets, advertising campaigns, and a team of spin doctors on your side to get your message out. To think like a guerrilla, what you need to do is turn your apparent weakness—your smallness— into your greatest strength. Sounds kind of like a Kung-Fu rerun. “Small is quick and powerful, little grasshopper.” In “Guerrilla,” marketing roshi Levinson takes the reader 426 Books through issues of positioning, customer service, word of mouth, free publicity, the need for top-notch printed materi- als, and into issues of direct mail, newsletters, networking, and yes, even the power of classified ads. Levinson’s book also benefits from a much cooler cover; a camouflage motif. “Guerrilla at home” works, not because it is a list of things that you can do...but because it provokes. In lieu of systems, Levinson just wants you to jam. Brainstorm, cast jellystains on yourself, think personal, think creative. Buy or steal this book. What these books share is a belief. A belief that an individual can learn to call their own shots and succeed. One warning, though. | have to ask what these guys have done in business as evidence to support their claims? Porten is someone who is successful because his business has evolved into an internet consulting practicé. | ask does he really have business smarts, or is he just a well-trained propeller- head profiting from an exploding field, and his success comes more from luck? Would his book have more weight if his experience came from a more competitive and financially tighter field? | wonder. As for Levinson, his primary accomplishment in business seems to be the “guerrilla” series; by marketing his own marketing, he seems to have made a bundle. | wonder if the movie, action figures and burger hut are far behind... » In Search of a New Left; Canadian Politics after the Neoconservative Assault James Laxer Viking J. Robinson | feel comfortable with this book in my hand, riding the 5:30 am 160 into Vancouver. On the crowded bus, amongst all the suits, this book, not unlike armour, protects me from the capitalist pigs on their way to work. Ha! | say. I’m not buying your earth-raping, social program destroying, profit- making, downsizing social paradigm. But it’s the kind of armour that’s light and shiny; the sort you wear for show, not battle. Unabashedly promoting a socialist agenda for Canada, James Laxer relies on his own experience as an NDP-insider, relaying internal politics that few Canadians will recognize. That’s not the best part of this book though, the best part’s when he takes intellectual swipes at mainstream ideology. It’s just too bad that these insightful slags are tangentially related to what he’s discussing, because the tangents seem more relevant and socially (as opposed to politically) JAMES CAXER developed. But that would be a whole other book. In here Laxer writes about the Socialist agenda in Canada. There are the inevitable comparisons to the US, the UK and France. Where once Democratic Socialists had Medicare to show for its efforts, Canadian Social- ism now flounders under the collective weight of American weakness (NAFTA) and our own businesses buying into a short-sighted conservative/capitalist market economy where the individual is king and politics is not a responsibil- ity, but a privilege. Watch Laxer watch Canada buckle to business (big and more next page...