THE SUCCESSFUL WOMAN: Sharpening Your Skills for Personal and Professional Development

A once-over-lightly for neophytes--""re-entering"" homemakers, recent grads, or whatever--by three Seattle-area professional-development specialists. Some of this is very basic--like Meadows' chapter on appearance: how to apply makeup and choose clothing so that everything blends and you're what's noticed. Much of it--including Dreger's discussion of application letters and rÉsumÉs--is standard information condensed. Other sections (all by Patterson) contain useful, if rudimentary, material on rime management, goal-setting, and money matters. (The last will even help you figure your net worth.) A late chapter on the needs of special groups of women--displaced homemakers, single parents--offers little but sympathy. Though aimed primarily at returning homemakers, Sally Ashley's Connecting (p. 310) is a much more forthright and specific job-hunting guide. On separate aspects of self-enhancement, such as time management, there are good individual books. But this will certainly leave beginners a little wiser than they were before.