A STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS
By
No magic formulas,"" says the publisher about Kiev's book. ""No overnight metamorphoses."" Maybe not. But there sure are a lot of platitudes in this trumped-up self-helper by the author of A Strategy for Daily Living. ""If the magnitude of your goal exceeds your capabilities, you may develop a fear of failure and be paralyzed. Transformation of ambitions into obsessions heightens dependency on others just as increased visibility heightens vulnerability."" Kiev heads his chapters with pithy tidbits from the eclectic likes of Santayana, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Eliot, and those italicized headings are the best part of this. The rest (including his particular penchant for problem-solving by means of notation on 3x5 cards) narrowly escapes pathology. But delusion is definitely a possibility: Kiev includes such subjects as diet (no thanks to Stillman), The Meaning of Love (none to Aristotle), and Self-Reliance (ditto for Emerson). As for success. . . if you can muddle through this, you can rule the world.