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A Review of POWERPLAY: What Really Happened at Bendix

 

             POWERPLAY: What Really Happened at Bendix. Ballantine Books, New York: 371 pages.
            
             A story she has to tell and an experience she has to share, Mary Cunningham, with her co-writer Fran Schumer, candidly delivers her account of "what really happened at Bendix" through a tasteful blend of recollections and assessments. It depicts and lays bare the first-hand experience of the author with the precarious and cutthroat character of corporate politics, overly hyped sexual scandals and persistent media intrusions as the book unfolds her version of the story.
             POWERPLAY pilots off as a narrative of the brief but intriguing career of Mary Cunningham with Bendix Corporation. The intricate details of her Catholic family background, exemplary educational performance and extensive intellectual prowess and skills coupled with the events, personalities and circumstances surrounding her entire stay at the billion-dollar corporation, greatly transforms the personal issues of this Executive Assistant turned Vice-President for Strategic Planning of Bendix into a dynamic, yet common, political struggle of being a woman inside the corporate elite circle. Her saga also includes an expository view of the media and its frivolous tactics and methods of getting the scoop, and, how they forcibly extract information and transform it to a marketable front-page material in utter disregard of ethics and truth. It then ventures into setting a backdrop for Cunningham's beliefs and values system and her early dealings with the clash of her "missionary" ideals against existing condescending stereotypes and prejudice of society. Her previous "successes" in gliding over and reconciling these differences through hard work, sheer optimism and blinded idealism proved to be insufficient in her battle against Bendix when intrigues hit her hardest where she expected it least and cared for most: her values and moral standards.


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