Books

Books : reviews

Robert L. Jolles.
The Way of the Road Warrior: lessons in business and life from the road most traveled.
Jossey-Bass. 2006

rating : 4 : passes the time
review : 28 January 2010

This isn't the book I thought I was getting from reading the dust-jacket blurb. I thought it was about business travel tips, but it's really about business consultancy tips. Those are fine, and made real by excerpts from Jolles' journal, but I've seen them before. Be nice to people (including the little people), be honest, be loyal, don't bad-mouth the opposition, etc. There are a few travel tips, but they probably only work if (a) you have a million air miles, (b) you are flying in the US, (c) you are flying before 11 September 2001. So not very generically transferrable to a person who flies significantly less, and mainly in Europe. (And if the kind of frenetic last minute dash onto planes he describes was common practice in the US before 9/11, it's not surprising that the terrorists had such an easy time of it.)

Probably the most surprising thing about the book is the last chapter, where he stops his travelling, essentially because it is destroying him and his family, and describes it as an addiction.