Books by Kevin Murphy

We are, undoubtedly, in a time where we need to be determined to succeed. We are all aware of the challenges that we face through globalisation, an unparalleled pace of change, all of the factors that have provided the script for seemingly endless versions of 'Shift Happens'youtube videos and its companion pieces. I have argued elsewhere that people who say that recession will last for some notional period of time are simply misleading us. If we, as a nation, are not competitive there will be no end to recession; it will become decline. In the short term, we need to be determined to succeed in other ways. We cannot accept a situation where we have high levels of youth unemployment whilst facing skills shortages and having vacancies that we cannot fill. We need people who are highly (and appropriately) skilled: that is why this book is so valuable. (David Cameron)

Neil McLennan and Kevin Murphy's latest book builds upon positive commendations of their first book written together, Determined to Succeed. Using a similar format McLennan and Murphy again profile some of the most successful people in a variety of careers and examine what skills have brought about their success and achievement. This book will be of interest to learners, teachers, employers and career changers.

In a 1907 lecture to Harvard undergraduates, Theodore Roosevelt warned against becoming "e;too fastidious, too sensitive to take part in the rough hurly-burly of the actual work of the world."e; Roosevelt asserted that colleges should never "e;turn out mollycoddles instead of vigorous men,"e; and cautioned that "e;the weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community."e; A paradigm of ineffectuality and weakness, the mollycoddle was "e;all inner life,"e; whereas his opposite, the "e;red blood,"e; was a man of action. Kevin P. Murphy reveals how the popular ideals of American masculinity coalesced around these two distinct categories. Because of its similarity to the emergent "e;homosexual"e; type, the mollycoddle became a powerful rhetorical figure, often used to marginalize and stigmatize certain political actors. Issues of masculinity not only penetrated the realm of the elite, however. Murphy's history follows the redefinition of manhood across a variety of classes, especially in the work of late nineteenth-century reformers, who trumpeted the virility of the laboring classes. By highlighting this cross-class appropriation, Murphy challenges the oppositional model commonly used to characterize the relationship between political "e;machines"e; and social and municipal reformers at the turn of the twentieth century. He also revolutionizes our understanding of the gendered and sexual meanings attached to political and ideological positions of the Progressive Era.