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Success Is A Side Effect: Leadership, Relationships, and Selective Amnesia

A practical guide for women on how to find happiness and boost self-worth.

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Anderson (When a Sistah’s Fed Up, 2006, etc.) offers advice from one girlfriend to another on life, love and making it.

“[S]uccess is the side effect of making better choices every day,” says the author in the introduction to her breezy yet sensible self-help book. She then sets out to show how some basic actions and attitude adjustments can help turn a humdrum life into a great one. If you can’t get ahead at work, have a man who won’t commit, are drowning in debt or struggling with a health crisis, the author offers words of wisdom. Her “Prescription for Happiness” encompasses 10 tips, including “[p]ursue your passions, not people,” and “[n]ever close your heart unless it’s temporarily under reconstruction.” Each chapter explores a different life lesson in detail (such as “[c]hange your mind often” and “love yourself first”), ending with a useful bullet-pointed summary. Throughout, Anderson, a former columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is perky but stern, and her tone is a mix of you-go-girl optimism and no-nonsense straight talk. But there’s sound advice behind such quips as, “Always act from a position of power, not fear” and “Don’t ignore the yellow lights on the dashboard of your life.” When she bluntly proclaims, “you ain’t Beyoncé,” it’s not a criticism but a counterpoint to the idea that success means excelling at everything. She drives home this concept with relatable personal stories of struggle (such as when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer) and triumph (such as her graduation from dental school). Stories of accomplished women in a variety of fields, including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and actress Angelina Jolie, help further illustrate Anderson’s lessons as she counsels women to look inward to find their own definitions of success.

A practical guide for women on how to find happiness and boost self-worth.

Pub Date: June 8, 2014

ISBN: 978-0978637835

Page Count: 190

Publisher: TyMAC books

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2014

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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