Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multibillion Dollar Industry in Europe Review

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Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multibillion Dollar Industry in Europe ReviewIn LE DEAL, real-estate developer Bynre Murphy relates his struggle to extend an American retail innovation -- outlet malls offering iconic apparel brands at deep discounts -- to a skeptical and change-averse Old World.
Murphy's saga is set in motion by the savings and loan crisis that devastated the US commercial real-estate market in 1992. His small but successful Washington, DC-based development company was wiped out, and Murphy and his boss find themselves clinging to the only asset their company retains -- licensing rights to open McArthur Glen retail outlet centers in Europe.
As Murphy explains to a long succession of French mayors, councilmen, administrators, and permit-granters, McArthur Glen has a stellar track record in the US, and its concept will be "win-win-win" in France:
- French shoppers will get 40-60% discounts on sought-after brands like Versace, Nike, Gucci, and Calvin Klein;
- the brands will be able to monetize their end-of-season inventory instead of writing it off; and

- the downtown merchants and restaurants will benefit from shoppers visiting from afar who need a place to refuel and buy what they couldn't find at the outlet. It's a no-brainer, right?
Umm... non.
As the presentations, setbacks, hearings, and appeals drag on for months, Murphy begins to understand the true nature of what he and McArthur Glen are up against as they try to gain a foothold in France. Any new business concept is viewed first and foremost as a threat to the established commercial order, and only vaguely and secondarily as an opportunity. As the author explains, in France it's all about job preservation, not job creation.
Murphy's key insight is that if he can move forward at exactly the right moment -- when he's won a regional victory that will inevitably trigger a backlash from Paris and a conclusive defeat -- he can use the French obsession with job preservation to outmaneuver his opponents and launch McArthur Glen in Europe. And as Murphy relates with a series of entertaining anecdotes and a self-effacing touch, nothing succeeds like success.
The crux of the story unfolds in France, but Murphy also describes McArthur Glen's simultaneous effort to open outlets in England, and the ensuing efforts to establish the company in Germany and Italy. Along the way we're treated to entertaining cameos from Mickey Mouse, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, soon-to-be German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and Italian dynastic heirs and petty mafiosos.
It's hard not to root for this 30-something American who relocates his young family to Paris and then realizes he's jumped off the deep end into the inscrutable waters of Continental politics and rivalries. But the author's determination to "never, never, ever give up" -- along with a little luck and a growing appreciation for the importance of local culture -- ultimately allow him and McArthur Glen to prevail, and then surpass all of the goals they'd originally set for Europe.
LE DEAL is a light-hearted, fast-paced read that also provides useful insights into how European culture manifests itself in the commercial sector, and why American business instincts can be at turns effective and counter-productive when applied on the Continent. I recommend it highly for Americans who interact with colleagues or customers across The Pond.
Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multibillion Dollar Industry in Europe Overview

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Chasing Lance: The 2005 Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's Ride of a Lifetime (with 20 photos included) Review

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Chasing Lance: The 2005 Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's Ride of a Lifetime (with 20 photos included) ReviewOne expects a respected author like Martin Dugard to cover the sporting event of the 2005 tour thoroughly and interestingly. But the bonus in "Chasing Lance" is Dugard's magnificently reasoned and masterfully written reason why Lance has transcended sport to become an international icon.
One later chapter is great travel writing. Dugard parallels his process of self-discovery of why HE is chasing Lance with a description of his first-time visit to Lourdes. He interweaves his two thought trains so skillfully that when he finishes his tour of the grotto and winds up his personal and painful train of remembrance and reason, I was gifted with a new insight about myself. The chapter brought me through Lance's struggles to not only renew my appreciation for my cancer surviving wife, but also to see my own dreams and struggles, however meager, in both a more realistic light, and at the same time an even brighter one.

At the time of Armstrong's record 7th straight Tour win, I heard a major American TV business news anchor scoff at Armstrong's advertising appeal saying, "Hey, come on, it's BICYCLE racing!" as if no one cares much about it, not like baseball, for instance. But Dugard convinces the reader (like we needed convicing) that the Lance personna is far bigger than the man--and almost everywhere. What Dugard does so well is not only to describe both the race and the phenomenon, but what it is in US that causes us to hold the IDEA of Lance so special.
So far, Lance has published two volumes of autobiography and his mother's memoirs are also available. Beyond these, teammate Michael Barry offers us a look "Inside the Postal Bus" and outdoor writer Daniel Coyle tracks Lance's 2004 season and the genesis of his darker moods in "Lance Armstong's War". Both are easy reads and have much to offer Lance fans, especially fans of bike racing.
"Chasing Lance", however, is the only one that tries to get at what it is about US, making it a multidimensional examination of this the first mega sports legend of the 21st century, and the first time that cancer survivorship has deservedly resulted in fame and reverence as great or greater than any other human accomplishment.Chasing Lance: The 2005 Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's Ride of a Lifetime (with 20 photos included) Overview

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The House in France: A Memoir Review

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The House in France: A Memoir ReviewWith exquisitely beautiful and frank detail, author Gully Wells shares in her memoir The House of France the memories she has of her mother Dee Wells and her step-father Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer as she grew up in London, Paris and in their summer home situated between Toulon and Marseille all amongst the royal, social and political elite.
Wells consistently paints images of a young girl coming to understand her mother through her writing, the eccentricities she observed and why it was her mother became the fierce independent woman who spoke her mind with such resolute conviction being the glamorous and often rebellious American journalist who wrote for The Guardian, The New York Times as well as authored a successful book titled Jane released in 1973. Explaining how her mother's wisdom clearly molded her into the woman she became, Wells giftedly tells a seemingly objective description that isn't always flattering, but always intriguing; however, throughout the entire piece there is an undercurrent of utter love and adoration that can't be contained in the last few pages as she writes about her return to her mother's house in France and how after six years following her mother's death she is finally able to return as she has never been without her mother present until at that very moment.
Beginning in Paris where her mother and father met and married, readers will be delighted, shocked, impressed and charmed by this wonderfully scripted memoir that is a traveler's dream and a daughter's reality.
Excerpt from the book: "'Take a chance' - this was the precept she had always lived by, the impulse that had propelled her forward, the belief she clung to as fervently as any of the pilgrims who worshipped at the shrine of Notre-Dame du Beausset-Vieux, in that tiny chapel on top of the hill, behind our house."The House in France: A Memoir Overview

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