Thomas Stazyk's irreverent debut, Identities, objectively explores how individuals' constructed identities determine their worldview and examines the contemporary issues of materialism, corporate greed, and personal identity with startling clarity. Dave Locke just got the call all executives in corporate America dread: the company is going in a different direction, thanks for all of your hard work, but we don't need you any longer. His sense of self and his place in the world shattered, Dave's experience and connections quickly land him a role as a senior partner in a management-consulting firm. As he settles into his new job, Dave takes a hard look at how narrowly he has defined himself and his life so that the mere loss of a job could be so personally devastating. He is disturbed by the greed, selfishness, and shallowness of some of his fellow partners, clients, and even his own son, Jim, a Wall Street executive. At the same time, thanks to his wife Jill, who is doing meaningful volunteer work with the less privileged, and his younger, rebellious and altruistic son, Alex, he learns to see the world differently. Dave evolves a new perspective on life and career, and he decides to change corporate culture and the capitalist system from the inside. A lot of people don't like change, however, and Dave finds that he has to pick his battles carefully. His mission sets him on an entertaining collision course with entrenched bureaucracies and office politicians as well as his ambitious son. It turns out to be a frustrating and risky business. Stazyk's scathing satire takes aim at materialism and greed with intelligence and humanism, challenging our definitions of success with a fine-tuned understanding of collective behavior. As inspiring as it is insightful, Identities is a thought-provoking commentary that redefines the modern landscape and encourages us to change our world for the better.
About the Author: Thomas E Stazyk was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied business and accounting at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and then spent twenty-eight years with an international accounting firm in the US and Japan as a certified public accountant, certified fraud examiner, and certified information systems auditor. During that time, he worked with numerous large and small, local and international organizations and learned firsthand that organizations have a personality that reflects the people in them. He then moved to Auckland, New Zealand, where he earned an MA in English from the University of Auckland and since has completed post-graduate study in world literatures including Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Thomas and his wife, Mahrukh, currently divide their time between Auckland and CUE Haven, a fifty-nine acre pastureland north of the city that they are restoring to a native New Zealand forest preserve