Gumpert, David E.

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Gumpert, David E.

PERSONAL: Married; children: two. Education: University of Chicago, B.A.; Columbia University, M.S.

ADDRESSES:Home—Needham, MA. Office—Gumpert Communications, 687 Highland Ave., Needham, MA 02494. E-mail—david@davidgumpert.com.

CAREER: Gumpert Communications (communications and consulting firm), Needham, MA, president, 1987-. Has also worked as an editor for Inc. and Harvard Business Review; former staff reporter, Wall Street Journal.

WRITINGS:

(With Jeffry A. Timmons) Insider's Guide to Small Business Resources, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1982, revised edition published as The Encyclopedia of Small Business Resources, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.

Growing Concerns: Building and Managing the Smaller Business, Wiley (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Stanley R. Rich) Business Plans That Win $$$; Lessons from the M.I.T. Enterprise Forum, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor) The Marketing Renaissance, Wiley (New York, NY), 1985.

Inc. Magazine Presents How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan: Featuring the Business Plans of Pizza Hut, People Express, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Celestial Seasonings, Software Publishing, Inc. Publishers (Boston, MA), 1990, third edition published as Inc. Magazine Presents How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan: Featuring the Business Plans of Pizza Hut, Software Publishing Corp., Celestial Seasoning, People Express, Ben & Jerry's, 1996.

Do-It-Yourself Public Relations: A Success Guide for Lawyers, Section of Law Practice Management, American Bar Association (Chicago, IL), 1995.

Inc. Magazine Presents How to Really Start Your Own Business: A Step-by-Step Guide Featuring Insights and Advice from the Founders of Crate & Barrel, David's Cookies, Celestial Seasonings, Pizza Hut, Silicon Technology, Esprit Miami, third edition, Inc. Publishing (Boston, MA), 1996, fourth edition, Lauson Publishing (Needham, MA), 2003.

Inc. Magazine Presents How to Really Create a Successful Marketing Plan, Inc. Publishing (Boston, MA), 1996, fourth edition, Lauson Publishing, 2003.

Burn Your Business Plan!: What Investors Really Want from Entrepreneurs, Lauson Publishing (Needham, MA), 2002.

(With Inge Joseph Bleier) Inge: A Girl's Journey through Nazi Europe, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

Also author of Better than Money: Build Your Fortune Using Stock Options and Other Equity Incentives in Up and Down Markets, Lauson Publishing (Needham, MA). Columnist for Business Week Online. Author of syndicated column, "You're the Boss."

SIDELIGHTS: Most of David E. Gumpert's books reflect his background as a business journalist. In The Marketing Renaissance, for example, he collected thirty-nine articles from the Harvard Business Review to make a volume that is "useful, analytical, and challenging," according to a reviewer for Sales & Marketing Management. Another of Gumpert's business books, Business Plans That Win $$$: Lessons from the M.I.T. Enterprise Forum, was hailed by Journal of Small Business Management reviewer Celeste Okpara as a valuable asset to anyone with ideas to sell or a new business to start. She found that one of the most valuable lessons in the text was on taking calculated risks, and concluded that learning to do so "will increase both investors' and entrepreneurs' chances for future success." The Insider's Guide to Small Business Resources won an endorsement from Forbes reviewer Thomas P. Murphy, who noted that Gumpert and coauthor Jeffrey A. Timmons "have had the wisdom and the humility to do something nobody else has done in the small business field. They have methodically brought together, under one cover, the basic sources for information, consulting help and capital for new and small enterprise." Murphy recommended the book "as a competent, comprehensive guide to a field in which information is scattered and hard to come by."

Inge: A Girl's Journey through Nazi Europe is far removed from the author's writings on business. This true story is assembled from the journals and other writings of Gumpert's aunt, Inge Joseph Bleier. While growing up in Chicago, Gumpert considered his Aunt Inge to be his best friend and trusted confidant. Yet, later in life, he watched uncomprehendingly as she became troubled, depressed, and eventually suicidal. After her death, a cousin gave him some of Inge's papers, which had been discovered among her belongings. Gumpert then learned that there had been a great deal he did not know about Aunt Inge, and that her past was so full of tragedy that it had certainly driven her to an early death. Growing up in Germany during World War II, Inge was just a teenager when she was forced to flee the Nazis. Along with approximately one hundred other Jewish children, she went first to Belgium, then France, then to Switzerland, and finally to the United States. Confronted by a Nazi officer and threatened with immediate execution, Inge courageously stood up to her captor and walked away with her life. She survived numerous immediate perils to her safety, but the pain of what she saw and endured stayed with her forever.

Reading about her ordeal, Gumpert was so disturbed that he began to experience signs of extreme distress himself. For the next ten years he researched Inge's story and sought to set it down on paper, using her voice as best as he could reconstruct it. As he remarked to Boston Globe writer Jack Thomas, "In expressing her thoughts, that is, her frustration or despondency, I did take liberties, but any dialogue comes from her manuscript, my interviews, or diaries or official reports." Booklist reviewer George Cohen concluded that the result of Gumpert's work "is a compelling account of one woman's personal Holocaust struggle."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2004, George Cohen, review of Inge: A Girl's Journey through Nazi Europe, p. 1593.

Boston Globe, August 30, 2004, Jack Thomas, review of Inge, p. B7.

Forbes, March 28, 1983, Thomas P. Murphy, review of Insider's Guide to Small Business Resources, p. 212.

Journal of Small Business Management, January, 1988, Celeste Okpara, review of Business Plans That Win $$$: Lessons from the M.I.T. Enterprise Forum, p. 61.

Sales & Marketing Management, May, 1986, review of The Marketing Renaissance, p. 81.

Women's Review of Books, July, 2004, Bethany Towne, review of Inge, p. 27.