cover image Pushing the Envelope: How to Do It All the Way to the Top

Pushing the Envelope: How to Do It All the Way to the Top

Harvey MacKay. Ballantine Books, $24.95 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-345-43295-7

Mackay (Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive) is back, and his motivational material will be familiar and comforting to his fans. Mackay has never claimed to be an intellectual. Using the same approach he has in the past, the author, who is chairman and chief executive of a $75-million envelope company when he's not on the lecture circuit, tells true short stories (usually in approximately four pages with big type and margins), each of which makes a point about the business of life and is capped with a lesson dubbed ""Mackay's Moral"" (""Be like a postage stamp. Stick to it, until you get there""; ""Even the Lone Ranger didn't go it alone""). To his credit, Mackay admits when he is revisiting familiar territory or expanding tales he has told before. This time, he concentrates more heavily on stories intended to inspire--there are countless vignettes of people who worked hard to overcome long odds--and provides more of his thoughts on what it takes to be a leader. As always, his homilies are entertaining, even if they rarely provide any groundbreaking bits of wisdom. Author tour. (Jan.)