A memoir for those interested in a personal account of the insurance industry or the author himself.
Smith recounts his troubled youth and his subsequent rise to the top of an insurance company.
Smith had an eventful childhood—he grew up in New York City in the 1950s and California in the ’60s, a shiftless youth who was repeatedly thrown out of school, financed his life with crime, and spent most of his days in a “drug-induced stupor.” While burglarizing a pawnshop, his friend Greg was fatally shot. He was often homeless and had his first failed marriage at 17. He was married three more times before finding marital happiness on the fifth attempt. An opportunity to work for American Income Life, an insurance company, proved to be transformative. Smith had finally discovered something (legal) for which he had a talent; he eventually become agent of the year. Even after experiencing some real success, however, he continued to drink excessively and use cocaine, painkillers, and crack. “Even as I write this all these years later, I can’t even fathom how I functioned on a day-to-day basis back then. It seems impossible now.” Only after a stint in rehab was the author finally able to turn his life around. He married, started a family, and become the president and CEO of the company.
Smith’s inspiring story mixes elements from three genres; he furnishes a memoir, a kind of motivational self-help guide, as well as an introduction to the insurance industry. The arc of Smith’s life is extraordinary—he managed to become an accomplished businessperson and family man after years of drug-addled purposelessness. His candor is also remarkable—he spares no punches when it comes to self-judgment and chronicles his foibles in granular detail. However, his life story remains a familiar one—a rags-to-riches triumph that constitutes a literary genre. The author dwells at great length on the internal machinations of the insurance business, a commentary that is predictably dry and often presented with excruciating specificity. Moreover, the author pivots at one juncture in his remembrance to furnish professional counsel, presumably directed to other insurance salesman, and this section of the book offers nothing new, rehearsing the usual tropes of any book that dispenses career instruction. Also, the author’s writing abounds with clichés, an inclination he all but announces early in the book when he warns the reader to “buckle up.” He describes crack as “cocaine on steroids” and proclaims his love of motivational mantras like “think big,” “opportunity unlimited,” and “step up so others can step in.” Consider this description of New York City in the 1950s, not utterly false but without nuance and clearly exaggerated; still, some may appreciate the straightforward characterization: “The city was rampant with drugs, murders, prostitution, homelessness, and every vice you can think of. Everyone chain-smoked. Everyone acted like assholes.” Smith has lived a memorable life, one almost certainly more gripping than its expression in this volume, and it should be a delightful read for those who know and love him.
A memoir for those interested in a personal account of the insurance industry or the author himself.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955026-13-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Ballast Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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