Seth Gordon knows from bad bosses. He once worked as a dishwasher in an old folks home, where his micromanaging supervisor told him everything he did was wrong ― whether it was stacking the plates, cleaning things in the right order or moving fast enough. “It was really about her need to be in charge,” Gordon says, “and I’ve seen versions of that ever since in different forms.”Which makes Gordon t

Namhae County in South Gyeongsang Province is often called “treasure island,” as there are many things to see, eat and enjoy. Famous tourist sites include Gacheon Village known for having stair-shaped rice paddies, and Boriam, a popular Buddhist temple in Mount Geum. German Village and House N Garden offer exotic scenery as well. The county is at the center of Hallyeo Marine Region, boasting spark

Riders head toward Place de la Concorde, where the revolutionary guillotine once stood in Paris. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT)PARIS ― When my editor emailed me about doing a story on Fat Tire Bike Tours in Paris, I immediately tried to think of an excuse not to do the story. Navigating through the streets of Paris on a bike? I couldn’t imagine a worse way to spend an afternoon.First, a little bac

Ahn Cheol-soo has polled as one of the figures young Koreans most look up to.(Ahn Hoon/The Korea Herald)Ahn committed to planting entrepreneurship in young hopefulsBehind Korea’s leadership in the high-tech world are a number of business innovators, technology wizards and far-sighted investors.Ahn Cheol-soo leads the pack with his success, acumen and a dramatic life story that combined to make him

Your Friendly Neighborhood CriminalBy Michael Van Rooy(Minotaur Books)Montgomery “Monty” Haaviko knows a lot about the criminal life, and he’s slowly learning about the straight life. But he does backslide.As if Haaviko, the hero of Michael Van Rooy’s “Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal,” isn’t busy enough. He baby-sits by day, and he’s trying to ward off a drug dealer who wants to take over a ro

You’re NextBy Gregg Hurwitz(St. Martin’s Press)Gregg Hurwitz delivers a chilling look at one man’s efforts to save his family from his haunted past in “You’re Next.”Mike was left at a foster home when he was 4. His last memory was his father promising to return. He never did.Flash-forward to the present: Mike has an amazing wife and a wonderful 8-year-old daughter. He runs a construction company t

RustBy Yang Gui-ja(Jimoondang, 5,000 won)What happens to your dreams when you know you can never reach them?In answer, author Yang Gui-ja’s novella “Rust” presents a portrait of a middle class man who no longer wants to be what he wanted to be, and is deeply disillusioned by his old ideals and aspirations.Yi, who used to dream of becoming a journalist, was rejected for his dream job as someone els

She had to kill off Precious.That was what Sapphire, the 60-year-old author of the 1996 underground classic “Push,” the novel that was the basis for the unflinching movie “Precious,” concluded.The California-born literacy teacher, poet, and author had no choice, given her commitment to social realism: An HIV-infected black woman in the 1980s would not have lived long enough to make it past the fir

Photographer Yousef Karsh took this famous portrait of Ernest Hemingway in 1957. (MCT)For much of the 1980s, beginning when I was in college, I used to read a Hemingway book a year. The point was not self-improvement but rather a kind of exploration: What was it, exactly, about his writing that I’d missed? I had read “The Sun Also Rises” in high school and had admired its spare portrayal of 1920s

Mount Eden Vineyards Estate Chardonnay is consistently one of the finest from California. But this one from the winery’s Saratoga line ― designed to showcase the Santa Cruz Mountain terroir ― is a real find at this price. The fruit is right there in the first sip. Light on the oak, the 2007 Saratoga Chardonnay carries a gentle lilt of citrus and a touch of anise. Like its big brother, it is Burgun