Kaplan, Glenn 1950–

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Kaplan, Glenn 1950–

PERSONAL:

Born May 6, 1950, in Portland, ME; married; children: one son. Education: Bowdoin College (graduated); attended Smith College; studied art in Florence, Italy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, public speaker, advertising executive, and creative director. Barnes & Noble Booksellers, creative director, 2001—. Worked for twenty years as a creative director in advertising agencies such as Foote, Cone & Belding; Geer; DuBois; Lintas; New York; Ammirati Puris Lintas; and Lowe Lintas. Guest on television programs, including the Merv Griffin Show. Worked as a painter of Calder mobiles under direction of artist Alexander Calder.

WRITINGS:

The Big Time: How Success Really Works in Fourteen Top Businesses (nonfiction), Congdon & Weed (New York, NY), 1982.

All for Money (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Evil, Inc. (novel), Forge Books (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Glenn Kaplan is a writer, novelist, and public speaker who has also navigated a lengthy professional career in advertising and marketing. For more than twenty years, he served as a creative director in a variety of advertising agencies, "strategizing with their top executives about how to sell everything from camcorders to soft drinks, mutual funds to baby shampoo, and, most importantly, how to sell the public image of the corporations themselves," noted a biographer on Kaplan's home page. Kaplan started his advertising career at the prestigious firm of Foote, Cone & Belding, and went on to work at many other notable agencies. Since 2001, Kaplan has been the creative director for the national bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Booksellers, "a company whose mission, culture, and values he shares and admires," the biographer stated.

Kaplan's first book was a nonfiction work entitled The Big Time: How Success Really Works in Fourteen Top Businesses, in which he "interviewed over 350 top executives about how they made it to the top, how they stay there, and how they feel about their success," reported the home page biographer.

Kaplan's next two works were novels. The first, All for Money, centers on the unwise business deal made by protagonist Bob Macallan, a thirty-five-year-old publisher who has steadfastly built his magazine, Elixer, into a successful venture. Now, Macallan is ready to sell off the magazine to a large publishing conglomerate that has offered him ten million dollars. The one condition is that Macallan must remain with the magazine for a year after its sale; if the publication remains profitable, he will earn his big payout; if not, he stands to lose not only the millions but the magazine itself. Almost immediately after the deal is made, increasingly nightmarish problems crop up that cause Macallan to believe he's been cheated, and that no one intended to pay him ten million dollars for his magazine in the first place. "Anyone interested in the business side of the magazine world will be intrigued by Kaplan's views" on the big-city publishing business, commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

Evil, Inc., Kaplan's second novel, had its genesis in the interviews he conducted for The Big Time. "The late Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group, sparked the idea when I was interviewing him about what makes corporate executives successful," Kaplan remarked on his home page. Henderson told Kaplan that the type of men "who become CEOs of big corporations have more in common with sociopaths than most people would care to admit," Kaplan noted. Though it is not necessary to be a psychopath in order to become a CEO, "it has been demonstrated that CEOs and psychopaths can have many traits in common," Kaplan told the interviewer on his home page.

In Evil, Inc., Kaplan "takes kill-or-be-killed business ideologies to psychopathic new levels in this deftly plotted corporate thriller," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Protagonist Ken Olson is a driven, high-energy business executive with his eye on constant advancement within the corporate world. His wife, Sandra, keeps asking him to move to a lower-stress job with a smaller company so that he will have more time and energy for her and the couple's young daughter, Sara, but Ken inadvertently finds a golden opportunity with his employer, Ayvil Plastics. He is promoted to the position of Dayton division director after a brief conversation with new executive vice president, Tom Pennington, hired to serve as the hatchet man who closes down the plant. Instead, Pennington accepts Ken's proposed plan to cut costs and keep the factory open. Soon, however, Ken finds himself targeted by a vengeful company CEO, furious that the plant has not been shut down. Ken's life is shattered when an explosion at the factory kills hundreds, including his wife and daughter, who were in the company's daycare facility. Further acts of business sabotage and backstabbing ruin Ken's reputation and force him out of his job. Shocked and enraged, and with the help of his brother-in-law, industrial expert Phil Lambert, Ken sets out to take revenge on the high-powered scoundrels who ruined his life without a second thought.

A Publishers Weekly critic remarked that Kaplan introduces believable heroes with plausible motivations, and "creates equally vivid and credible villains" as well. Throughout the novel, Kaplan "keeps the pot boiling vigorously, provides low-key guidance to the Machiavellian plots and counterplots hatching in half a dozen executive suites, and confirms every dastardly stereotype his enormous target audience" harbors about big corporations and gigantic businesses, commented a writer in Kirkus Reviews.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Barron's, January 31, 1983, John Starrels, review of The Big Time: How Success Really Works in Fourteen Top Businesses, p. 36.

Changing Times, June, 1984, review of The Big Time, p. 88.

Glamour, November, 1982, Nancy Evans, review of The Big Time, p. 189.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2007, review of Evil, Inc.

Library Journal, October 1, 1982, review of The Big Time, p. 1874; April 1, 1993, Will Hepfer, review of All for Money, p. 131.

Publishers Weekly, July 30, 1982, review of The Big Time, p. 70; February 15, 1993, review of All for Money, p. 200; June 4, 2007, review of Evil, Inc., p. 29.

Working Woman, February, 1983, Marilyn Machlowitz, review of The Big Time, p. 33.