bookpagedev

by Amy Scribner

Most air travelers these days dread their flights, knowing they’ll be crammed in the plane for a journey that likely will feature too few refreshments and too many delays. Not Peter Russell, the unabashedly romantic hero of author James Collins’ irresistible new comedy of manners, Beginner’s Greek. Whenever Peter boards a plane, which is often, due to his Wall Street job, he wonders whether this will be the flight on which he meets the woman of his dreams. Then, on a trip from New York to Los Angeles, it actually happens: A woman sits next to him who is not only beautiful, but on page 500 of one of Peter’s favorite books. They talk (or rather, Holly talks and a smitten Peter tries his best to answer intelligibly). They learn about each other’s favorite books, their families, their jobs. It looks as if this might be love at first sight.

He felt sort of the way he did when he floated on his back in cold ocean water on a clear hot day and aligned his body with the sun. The cold wavelets lapped up against him; the sun warmed his face, and he felt deliciously stimulated and calm. They had not talked about anything particularly important. They had not fused their identities with the force of smashed atoms. They had come together as simply as two flowers intertwining. How happy he felt. Five hours later, they land in L.A. and promise to meet for dinner. But when Peter gets to his hotel, her phone number has vanished from his shirt pocket. Years later, when he and Holly meet again, she’s on the arm of a womanizing but charming author who also happens to be Peter’s closest friend. The two eventually marry, and, resigned, Peter marries the dull but sweet Charlotte. It seems Peter and Holly weren’t meant to be, but fate proves it sometimes has a funny way of working things out.

Collins, a former Time editor who has also contributed to The New Yorker, writes with spare, graceful style, and Peter Russell exudes an earnest everyman appeal that will make many a reader wish he could spring out of the pages. Beginner’s Greek is one of those books that both perfectly satisfies and leaves you wanting more. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

Most air travelers these days dread their flights, knowing they'll be crammed in the plane for a journey that likely will feature too few refreshments and too many delays. Not Peter Russell, the unabashedly romantic hero of author James Collins' irresistible new comedy of manners,…

YA, YA Fiction

YA Fiction YA

The toll of unintended consequences

Review by bookpagedev

by James Webb

Readers of Jay Asher's debut novel for teens, Thirteen Reasons Why, should be forewarned never has a page-turner of a book been so difficult to read. This may sound like a criticism, but in fact it's a compliment, for this is the story of a suicide's aftermath, and Asher's ability to convey the anguish of someone who was left behind is truly remarkable.

The person in question is Clay Jensen, a likeable, intelligent teenager who comes home one afternoon to find a package with no return address on his porch; its contents will change his life. Inside are seven cassette tapes, each side numbered in turn to 13, with the last one blank. When he puts the first tape in an old player in his garage, to his horror the voice that he hears is coming from the grave. It is the voice of his secret crush Hannah Baker, a girl from his school who, two weeks earlier, had taken her own life.

Hannah's instructions are specific: Clay must listen to each tape in turn, for each one is about a person whose actions had some bearing on her suicide, he must follow a map she had provided to locations about town where events in her story took place, and he must send the tapes on to the next person on the list when he is finished. Over the course of the evening, Clay will find that Hannah Baker wasn't who he thought she was, and that she wasn't what everyone said she was. He will learn some bitter truths about himself and the people he knows that actions can have unintended consequences and that inaction may trigger the worst consequences of all.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teens in the 15 to 19 age group; peer pressure, adolescence angst, drugs and many other factors can make growing up unbearable for many. Thirteen Reasons Why tackles the issue head on, and doesn't offer any easy answers, but it does offer hope. It's a serious read, for serious readers, that delivers a powerful look at a teen in torment.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Real-life struggles

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

Before approaching In the Little World, readers should understand that "midget" is considered an offensive word, and that "dwarfs" and "little people" are the generally acceptable terms used to designate adults whose height is 4 feet, 10 inches or less. Journalist John H. Richardson’s bluntly honest exploration of a society unfamiliar to most of us is sure to intrigue readers.

Richardson attended a Little People of America convention to gather material for an Esquire article a piece that laid the foundation for this book. A veteran convention-goer told him about first-time registrants. Some midgets, he says, "adapt to the tall world to the point where they almost forget they’re small, and they don’t want anything to remind them. And when they see other dwarfs for the first time, especially in large numbers like these, they just plain freak out. They see the big butts and big heads and little arms and little legs and it hits them like a truck: Do I look like that? A lot of times, they walk right out the door and never come back."

Richardson skillfully illuminates struggles like these in greater depth. He does more than transcribe the feelings of little people, which range from "I don’t understand why I’m a dwarf; it isn’t fair" to the insistence of others who say they would refuse any magic cure because being short is "who they are." Those sentiments are merely the starting point, as Richardson goes on to probe their minds and to debate with them about the medical, social and ethical concerns surrounding them. Far from an accumulation of variations on the common "big-heart-in-a-small-body" theme, In the Little World grapples with the type of gut issues inherent in the recollection of one little person: "My grandmother once said to me, I’ve got a good idea for you. You could stay home and be a typist. That way nobody will see you.’"

Richardson, whose work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New York, GQ and Premiere, pays special attention to Jocelyn Powell, whose dwarfism is characterized not uniquely by critical physical problems requiring a long series of painful operations. This teenager’s courage, resiliency and self-possession traits shared by others in her world will certainly make readers look up to her and many of her colleagues.

Alan Prince of Deerfield Beach, Florida, is an ex-newsman and college lecturer.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Party of two

Review by bookpagedev

by Angela Leeper

Author Martha Freeman introduced readers to Holly in The Trouble with Cats, in which the third grader adjusts to her new stepfather and his four pesky cats. Next came The Trouble with Babies, in which Holly settles into a new home in San Francisco and makes friends with Xavier and Annie and her new baby sister. Babies leaves off with the news that Holly’s mother is pregnant, but who knew Holly was headed for the double trouble she encounters in her latest predicament, The Trouble with Twins.

Her identical twin brothers, Jeremy and Dylan, are about to turn two years old. In between the nonstop spills (from both toddlers and cats), her parents’ constant fatigue and their mounting arguments, who has the time or energy to plan a birthday party for the boys? Holly eagerly volunteers and enlists the help of her friends. With Holly’s detailed plans, Xavier’s amazing science tricks and Annie’s expertise with toddlers, what could go wrong? An entire class of preschoolers, a mud-soaked backyard, a cat with frosting- covered whiskers and birthday boys sleeping through their own party, for starters. A call to the local joke-telling barristo, a raid of Holly’s stepfather’s secret cupboard and Holly’s own quick thinking and levelheadedness turn a near disaster into mere controlled chaos.

The day’s mounting tension and myriad antics will keep young readers entertained. Illustrated with breezy sketches that highlight the story’s energy, this book is an excellent selection for children ready to move up from beginning readers to chapter books. Siblings, whether they have twins in the family or not, will relate to the ups and downs of Holly’s busy family life. With a concluding phone call from Holly’s father, which hints at a new addition to the family, Holly may be in for more trouble, and readers may be treated to more of her adventures. Angela Leeper, a mother of identical twin girls in Wake Forest, North Carolina, can vouch for the realism of Holly’s experiences.

Nature

Nature

Visualizing the Age of Discovery

Review by bookpagedev

by Alison Hood

The Age of Discovery, the 15th through the 18th centuries, gave rise to magnificent exploits and explorations of art, science and ideas. Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery is a rich testament to that heady period. In the book, renowned British naturalist and documentary-maker Sir David Attenborough teams with three august (if comparatively unknown) colleagues Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos to explore the artistic legacies of four gifted European artist-scientists and one passionate antiquarian living in that time, who devoted their lives and art to investigating the flora and fauna of the old, new and Far Eastern worlds.

Attenborough’s introductory essay traces the origins of picturing the natural world, setting the stage for the scientific and artistic enquiries of Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby, whose work is chronicled in five successive essays. Artworks are elegantly interspersed throughout the text and comprise a wonder of visual delights: full-color plates (enlivened by Attenborough’s arcane, amusing commentary) and figures of plants, insects and animals ranging from da Vinci’s anatomical studies of horses and bears to Merian’s pioneering depictions of insects and plants in the South American Dutch colony of Surinam. Of particular note are the discussions of dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum, his encyclopedic collection of drawings and prints by a range of artists, and the account of Merian’s journeys extraordinary undertakings for a 17th-century divorced woman in her fifties.

All artist plates in Amazing Rare Things are from the Royal Library collection at Windsor Castle; figures derive from the archives of the British Museum, the British Library and numerous other sources. A reading list is included for those who wish to know more about da Vinci, et al. In today’s world, imperiled as it is with threats of global warming and loss of various species, this stunningly beautiful book is a masterful tribute and a wakeup call.

Former park ranger Alison Hood enjoys the amazing redwoods of Northern California.

Memoir

Memoir

One last work from Jan de Hartog

Review by bookpagedev

by Anne Bartlett

Jan de Hartog, one of those rare talents who wrote well in two languages, was best known in his native Netherlands for Holland’s Glory, a nautical tale that was hugely popular among the Dutch as they endured Nazi occupation in World War II. But in the United States, where he eventually relocated, he is remembered most fondly for his historical novels about the Quakers, particularly The Peaceable Kingdom.

When de Hartog died in 2002 at 88, he left behind an exquisite short memoir about his mother’s death, now published as A View of the Ocean. It offers insight into his own decision in midlife to join the Society of Friends, but its more important theme is universal: how we can come to terms with losing our parents, learning more about both them and ourselves in the process.

De Hartog was lucky in his parents. His father was a famous Protestant minister and university professor who spoke out against the Nazis; his mother was a woman of gentle mien and steel spine who did heroic work among her fellow prisoners in a Japanese detainment camp in Dutch Indonesia during the war. Both were devoted Christians who truly lived their beliefs. But de Hartog’s experiences in the war pushed him toward cynicism and doubt.

His widowed mother Lucretia’s difficult death from stomach cancer at 79 helped him find his way back to their faith. A View of the Ocean does not spare us the pain and near-madness she suffered, nor his own emotional extremes. De Hartog’s description of his mother’s last days is wrenching, but it is also uplifting in the best sense. As he nursed his mother, de Hartog had a kind of spiritual epiphany, all the more striking for being incomprehensible to him as it happened. He only came to understand its significance following her death, as he got to know her Quaker friends. Her death, in all its agony, brought him to what Quaker founder George Fox called an infinite ocean of light and love. Even if you don’t share de Hartog’s beliefs, you’ll be moved by his honest and beautiful testimony. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

Jan de Hartog, one of those rare talents who wrote well in two languages, was best known in his native Netherlands for Holland's Glory, a nautical tale that was hugely popular among the Dutch as they endured Nazi occupation in World War II. But in…

Biography

Biography

A brief, miraculous reunion

Review by bookpagedev

by Howard Shirley

Tragedy and miracles go hand in hand, intertwined in our experiences and so deeply woven that we struggle to pick out the threads of each. Why did this one survive, and this one not? Why a miraculous recovery from illness here but not there? Is it medicine? Is it luck? Is it truly the hand of God? The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up follows the pattern of tragedy and miracle in the life of Donny Herbert, a Buffalo city firefighter. In 1995 Donny was severely injured during a fire when a roof collapsed on top of him. Deprived of oxygen for six minutes, Donny was left in a persistent vegetative state, unable to communicate and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. His body could function, but his mind was, for all appearances, gone. Donny remained in this state for nearly 10 years, as his wife, family and friends struggled to move on, hoping and praying that someday, a miracle might happen.

In April 2005, it did. Despite doctors’ certainty that he would never be able to communicate or even respond, Donny simply woke up, able to speak and even toss a football with his now nearly grown sons, a miracle that lasted for nearly 18 hours.

How did this astonishing recovery take place? Did medicine play a part? Was it Donny’s indomitable will, working in him through the long, dark years? Or was it a miracle, attributed by some to a revered priest from Buffalo’s past? Rich Blake’s account explores all of these questions, though the answers remain as elusive as ever. Even if Blake cannot answer the questions, he does provide a compelling portrait of an ordinary man and his working-class community. In the life of Donny Herbert, readers will discover people who could live just down the street, and come to appreciate the strength that can exist in the everyday, especially when that everyday is girded with love.

Nature

Nature

The land of vanishing ice

Review by bookpagedev

by Lynn Hamilton

Prepare to feast your eyes and break your heart. Sebastian Copeland’s Antarctica: The Global Warning is a gorgeous coffee-table book laden with photos of the white continent that are both beautiful and damning. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth proved that the issue of global warming can’t penetrate the hearts of non-scientists through words alone; it needs pictures. Pictures of melting icebergs and vanishing snow cover. Antarctica: The Global Warning follows up on the pictorial approach, bringing expert art photography into the equation. Mikhail Gorbachev, founding president of Green Cross International, wrote the book’s foreword, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio contributed the preface. The book’s presiding genius, though, is photographer/activist Copeland, whose photos of ice sculptures floating in warming Antarctic seas and stranded ocean birds tell most of the story. Antarctica is quietly feeling the effects of global warming at five times the rate of the rest of the world, Copeland informs us. Antarctic seas are warming faster than waters in more temperate zones. Antarctic victims birds, bears, historic ice shelves have no media voice.

It makes sense to start caring, though. If too much of Antarctica melts, it will raise the level of the world’s oceans and wipe out coastal communities from New York to Santiago. Can a coffee-table book contribute seriously to the global warming discussion? Does the beauty of Antarctica’s scenery goad us into action or lull us into a dream state? Readers will have to decide what they think of bewildered penguins standing valiantly atop cliffs that have been shorn of ice. And readers will have to speculate on what those giant skeletons of picked over bones, lying in the middle of an Antarctic plain, tell us about the future of our planet.

Prepare to feast your eyes and break your heart. Sebastian Copeland's Antarctica: The Global Warning is a gorgeous coffee-table book laden with photos of the white continent that are both beautiful and damning. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth proved that the issue of global warming…

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Loving Latin, ad infinitum

Review by bookpagedev

If you’ve been feeling Latin-deprived lately, Harry Mount has come to the rescue with Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life. The author began his study of Latin as a schoolboy in London, studied ancient history at Oxford University and worked as a Latin tutor before becoming a journalist. His knowledge, appreciation and love of Latin literature and Roman culture are apparent on every page, and whether you want to refresh your command of the language or have always wanted to get a taste of it, this book will guide and entertain you. Mount begins by pointing out that celebrities like Angelina Jolie have never studied the language, yet choose to get tattoos in Latin. (The tattoo on Jolie’s stomach reads, Quod me netrit me destruit or What nourishes me destroys me. ) The author quickly convinces us should we need convincing that Latin and Roman culture have a pervasive influence even today.

Mount readily admits that his book (already a bestseller in the U.K.) is not a comprehensive grammar, but a memory boost for some, or an introduction for beginners. Grammatical explanations are clear and concise and there is a suggested primer for more comprehensive language study for the dedicated Latin scholar. Even for readers not devoted to studying Latin, Carpe Diem is a must-read for understanding how ancient Rome continues to play a role in modern society from inventions such as indoor plumbing and republican government to the influence of Latin literature on English literature.

Mount’s humorous book is a testament to the author’s abiding love of the language. As he writes, The joy that a little learning of Latin brings is immense. Read this book and you, too, will become a Latin lover.

If you've been feeling Latin-deprived lately, Harry Mount has come to the rescue with Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life. The author began his study of Latin as a schoolboy in London, studied ancient history at Oxford University and worked as a…

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

When their sons and husbands leave home to sneak into the United States, Mexican women ask the underlying question in Crossing Over: Will they arrive or will they die? Three million illegal Mexican aliens some say it’s really more than twice that number are in the United States because they won the life-or-death gamble against the desert, the Rio Grande and vigilant border guards. Thousands of others lost, and their women at home never got an answer.

In 1996, a speeding pickup truck crammed with 27 undocumented Mexicans tried to elude the Border Patrol and hurtled into a ditch in Temecula, California. Among the eight who died were three brothers, Benjamin, Jaime and Salvador Chavez. Author RubÅ½n Mart’nez visited the grieving family and kept in close touch with its members as they made their way to California’s strawberry fields, Missouri’s tomato farms and a Wisconsin slaughterhouse knowing that if they remained in Mexico they and their children would be frozen in futureless poverty.

Through the Chavez clan, Martinez skillfully depicts elements of migrant culture the fatigue of a back-breaking day in the fields, the ever-present fear of being caught, the bitter dealings with coyotes yes, coyotes. That’s the name given to the smugglers who demand from $500 to $3,000 per person to shepherd their migrant clients on the road to an American future and who have no compulsion against abandoning them when things go wrong.

Especially riveting is the tale of the dead brothers’ sister, Rosa, who decides to join her husband in the U.S. Cradling her two-year-old daughter, Yeni, Rosa crawls under barbed wire fences, staggers up desert hills, sits in a van so crowded she has to ask permission to stretch her legs and for two weeks eats little more than potato chips and sips soda. Years from now, a grown-up Yeni probably won’t remember the trip, but Rosa will. And so will you.

The follow-up to the author’s 1993 nonfiction book The Other Side, which also examines Hispanic culture, Crossing Over appears at an appropriate time during the national debate on immigration reform. It presents a compelling and compassionate case on behalf of foreigners who aspire to the low-paying jobs that most Americans don’t want.

Alan Prince of Deerfield Beach, Florida, is an ex-newsman and college lecturer.

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

Personal power it’s all yours

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

Renowned business speaker and best-selling author Brian Tracy says everyone can double their income and double their time off. Sound too good to be true? His latest book, Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals, spells out the secret that successful, fulfilled people already know focusing on key areas gives the greatest return. Tracy asks probing questions to help readers develop goals, and BookPage recently turned the tables on the author to learn more about his intriguing strategy.

Explain what you mean by focal point. How do you find it? Your focal point is the most important point of attention or measure to determine success or failure in a particular area. For example, if health and fitness was your goal, your focal point could be your waist size. If financial independence was your goal, the number of months you could live on your accumulated savings could be your focal point. Your concentration on your focal point almost always improves your performance in that area.

You stress the importance of taking responsibility for every area of your life. How did you learn this lesson? When I was a young man, I looked around me and noticed that most people blamed their circumstances on everything and everyone except themselves. I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for your life, it gives you a sense of personal power and energy that enables you to take charge of the things that happen to you. Accepting responsibility makes you a creator of circumstances rather than simply a creature of circumstances.

You claim your system will enable people to double their income and double their time off. Is that really possible? Many thousands of my students and graduates have already doubled their income and doubled their time off. Since 20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value of your work, if you simply concentrate more and more time on the top 20% of your tasks, you will double your productivity and have far more time available for your personal life.

Your book is based on a study of the habits of people who are both successful and fulfilled. What are these people doing differently? The most happy and fulfilled people in our society are doing what they love to do. They are continually getting better and better in that area. They know what is important to them. They throw their whole hearts into their life and work. As a result, they get far more living out of life than the average person.

What’s holding the rest of us back from achieving our dreams? The reason people do not fulfill their potential is because they are confused about what it is they really want in life. We encourage people to ask themselves a series of questions on a regular basis: What do I really want to do with my life? How would I spend my life if I were financially independent today? What would I do if I learned today I only had six months left to live? And especially, What do I really love to do? When you ask and answer these questions on a regular basis, you become clearer about your dreams and goals than ever before.

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

Women’s work is never done

Review by bookpagedev

by Sharon Secor

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation's attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it's possible to…