TRUE SUCCESS

Slick sloganeering about the meaning of life, laced with quotable quotes from philosophical heavyweights. A professor of philosophy at Notre Dame who takes considerable pride in his success teaching football players, Morris is a master of catchy mnemonics, especially alliteration. Here, he explains how the key to success lies in the seven C's of conception, confidence, concentration, consistency, commitment of emotional energy, character, and capacity to enjoy. Each C is spelled out in its own chapter, and all are full of appropriate examples from Morris' own life and stories gleaned from other sources and studded with sayings from the likes of Socrates, Thoreau, Bacon, Confucius, and Carlyle. His advice is determinedly simplistic: e.g., make a list of your goals on a 3x5 card and tape it up where you'll see it frequently. He cannot resist rhetoric such as ``you have to plan your work and then work your plan,'' but alliteration appears to be his favorite teaching device. Besides the seven C's of success, there's the 2- U Principle (involving uniqueness and union), the Human Happiness 4-U Thesis (involving the above plus usefulness and understanding), and the great I AM acrostic defining the basic dimensions of human life as the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral. His message is simple: don't confuse success with power, wealth, status, or fame, for it lies instead in personal excellence and fulfillment. There's little that is new or controversial in Morris' philosophy; the package he has put together demonstrates his facility as a teacher rather than any originality as a thinker. (First printing of 75,000)