Back on Track: How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve - Hardcover

Norville, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684832607 ISBN 13: 9780684832609

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

Deborah Norville, recounts her own harrowing story among profiles of other women in crisis. These women, who have shared their stories with Norville, have faced some of life's most distressing events, from a battle with breast cancer to a painful divorce, from the loss of a loved one to financial ruin.
Based on her own success with reconstructing her life at its nadir, Norville offers, with warmth and wit, a clear, practical ten-point plan for enduring crises and emerging with health and well-being intact. She hopes that by sharing her story, and those of other courageous women who have overcome the most adverse circumstances, she will help readers locate within themselves the strength and will to take the first steps toward self-reclamation and get their own lives back on track.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Norville is the anchor of Inside Edition, America's top-rated syndicated news-magazine.

Reviews

Emmy Award^-winning journalist and anchor of the television newsmagazine Inside Edition, Norville writes a self-help book directed at women who have experienced a crisis and are suffering from depression as a result. The author's own crisis (being pilloried in the press and publicly humiliated during her tenure as Today show host and eventually forced to leave television with her career in shambles) is the basis for this book. She recounts how she was paralyzed by her depression and haunted by feelings of self-criticism and inadequacy. Her struggle to recover is also detailed, and she provides a 10-point recovery plan for others to follow. Her book also describes the personal experiences of several other women who have had to overcome disasters and get on with their lives. Although some of the advice may seem a little flip (her recommendation against seeking professional help, for instance), and while Norville's crisis pales in comparison to what some of the other women go through (such as rape and suicide), and in spite of the fact that she slips some Christian dogma in here and there, her book will be of interest to self-help readers turning to her because of her celebrity. Kathleen Hughes

Norville got a lot of heat for allegedly ousting Jane Pauley from the Today Show, and she has set herself up to take more heat by writing an amazingly weak book. The stated purpose is to tell other people how she managed to pull herself out of the bottom of the TV barrel after sustaining a major public-relations hit. To broaden the message of starting anew, Norville includes stories of other women who managed to bounce back from more terrifying circumstances, including rape, paraplegia, and spousal suicide. But these stories are always secondary to her own misfortune, which, quite frankly, pales in comparison. Norville seldom manages to get down to the level of a "normal person," and she writes of her life on Park Avenue with her cook and nanny as if all her readers share this kind of lifestyle. What's more, Norville's advice on how to bounce back has been said before, said often, and said better. On merit alone, this book is not worth purchase; buy only where demand requires it.
-?Pamela A. Matthews, Univ. of Maryland Lib., Baltimore
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684832607
• ISBN 13: 9780684832609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256