GETTING FROM TWENTY TO THIRTY: Surviving Your First Decade in the Real World

A sort of postgraduate version of Edelhart's College Knowledge (1979)--with lessons extrapolated from Breaking Through the Job Barrier (1981). The book is divided into three sections: on the early, the middle, and the late twenties. In each, Edelhart takes up psychological problems, career planning, housing, wise buying and budgeting, health, and personal relationships. The car buyer, for instance, shifts from a jalopy to a sporty model to a station wagon or other family ear. Except as a stage-theory mini-series, dividing up the material doesn't make sense--but the information, though not startling, is sound and à la mode. Edelhart gives as much good advice about career planning, personal finance planning, and networking as many full-dress treatments of those subjects. (Facing interviews, for instance, is divided into Put-Down, Psychiatric, Civilized, Mapped-Out, ""Tell-Me-About-Yourself,"" and Panel.) For the less sophisticated young, especially, it's easy to use and easy to take.