Books For April

Here are my reviews of two books I'm thinking about for April-any comments on what people would rather read and discuss would be appreciated!

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

By David Sheff

A grueling and heartbreaking read. I think it is fair to say that just about everyone I know has had a drug addict in their life in some capacity. We are all affected by this insane siege of evil that seems to be destroying families everywhere. I admire Sheff's candid writing and found his journey riveting and disturbing. It is agonizing to go through each triumph and each relapse in the book. It tears at your heart. His denial, his guilt and his struggle to believe in hope is hard to read. Sheff battles his own demons as he tried to save his son and comes to understand and accept the disease of addiction. I think the book is incredibly honest and I'm planning on reading Sheff's son Nic's book Tweak about the same journey but through his own perspective.

I think it could provide an interesting discussion on pop culture, parenting and the current drug culture.

From Publishers Weekly

Expanding on his New York Times Magazine article, Sheff chronicles his son's downward spiral into addiction and the impact on him and his family. A bright, capable teenager, Nic began trying mind- and mood-altering substances when he was 17. In months, use became abuse, then abuse became addiction. By the time Sheff knew of his son's condition, Nic was strung out on meth, the highly potent stimulant. While his son struggles to get clean, his second wife and two younger children are pulled helplessly into the drama. Sheff, as the parent of an addict, cycles through denial and acceptance and resistance. The author was already a journalist of considerable standing when this painful story began to unfold, and his impulse for detail serves him personally as well as professionally: there are hard, solid facts about meth and the kinds of havoc it wreaks on individuals, families and communities both urban and rural. His journey is long and harrowing, but Sheff does not spare himself or anyone else from keen professional scrutiny any more than he was himself spared the pains—and joys—of watching a loved one struggling with addiction and recovery. Real recovery creates—and can itself be—its own reward; this is an honest, hopeful book, coming at a propitious moment in the meth epidemic.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell is a New Yorker columnist who has written 4 books (all of which I have read and loved.) His work tends to be more of a political/economical commentary than a story but I think it would provide interesting discussion topics. Outliers is a fascinating look at what sets people apart from each other. How kismet translate to success in the modern world. Gladwell suggests that things like timing, income level, and culture contribute as much to a person's success as hard work and tenacity do. "These are stories, [about] people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up." Gladwell points out "steady accumulations of advantages" that seem to add up to success in business and education.

Obviously this book appeals to me on a business level but it also makes me think about opportunities in my personal life. Plus- the stories about how huge mogals and well respected people have made themselves stand apart are fascinating. Outliers makes me wonder what kind of cultural legacy I am leaving with my kids, how I can create opportunities for them and what unknown factors are going to affect them. Basically the same stuff I've been stressing about for years. The environmental minutiae I can't even fathom, let alone control.

From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Leslie ChangIn Outliers, Gladwell (The Tipping Point) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered—the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. His gift for spotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then gradually revealing his lessons in lucid prose, is on vivid display. Outliers begins with a provocative look at why certain five-year-old boys enjoy an advantage in ice hockey, and how these advantages accumulate over time. We learn what Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart had in common: along with talent and ambition, each enjoyed an unusual opportunity to intensively cultivate a skill that allowed them to rise above their peers. A detailed investigation of the unique culture and skills of Eastern European Jewish immigrants persuasively explains their rise in 20th-century New York, first in the garment trade and then in the legal profession. Through case studies ranging from Canadian junior hockey champions to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, from Asian math whizzes to software entrepreneurs to the rise of his own family in Jamaica, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth and luck account for success—and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individual gifts. Even as we know how many of these stories end, Gladwell restores the suspense and serendipity to these narratives that make them fresh and surprising.One hazard of this genre is glibness. In seeking to understand why Asian children score higher on math tests, Gladwell explores the persistence and painstaking labor required to cultivate rice as it has been done in East Asia for thousands of years; though fascinating in its details, the study does not prove that a rice-growing heritage explains math prowess, as Gladwell asserts. Another pitfall is the urge to state the obvious: No one, Gladwell concludes in a chapter comparing a high-IQ failure named Chris Langan with the brilliantly successful J. Robert Oppenheimer, not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone. But who in this day and age believes that a high intelligence quotient in itself promises success? In structuring his book against that assumption, Gladwell has set up a decidedly flimsy straw man. In the end it is the seemingly airtight nature of Gladwell's arguments that works against him. His conclusions are built almost exclusively on the findings of others—sociologists, psychologists, economists, historians—yet he rarely delves into the methodology behind those studies. And he is free to cherry-pick those cases that best illustrate his points; one is always left wondering about the data he evaluated and rejected because it did not support his argument, or perhaps contradicted it altogether. Real life is seldom as neat as it appears in a Malcolm Gladwell book. (Nov.)Leslie T. Chang is the author of Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved