Ambition: How We Manage Success and Failure throughout Our Lives

A look at the creative strategies people use in their personal and professional lives draws on the latest psychological and social research to show how humans adapt to winning and losing. 25,000 first printing. National ad/promo. Tour.

Brim, director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Mid-Life Development, here delivers an antidote to the rat race and a meditation on ambition, rather than a how-to-succeed primer to placate those who haven't yet realized their dreams. In so doing, he strips away sundry myths: "The Second Chance" (there may not be one); "Late Blooming" (seldom); "Hard Work Rewarded" (don't count on it). And he cautions us that success is often empty--and that it's harder to attain in a shrinking economy. Tip O'Neill, William Faulkner and Russell Baker are among those who present their wit and wisdom on achievement or the lack of it. Oddly, we hear no word from those whose hard work has been rewarded with MacArthur prizes.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Succinct and finely tuned thoughts on why happiness has little to do with money, youth, or even education, by the director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Mid-Life Development. Humans make themselves happy, Brim argues, by finding a ``way to live at the level of just manageable difficulty.'' He begins this clearsighted meditation on ``human nature and ambition'' with the example of his father, who left teaching at 60 and set his ``unyielding drive for growth and mastery'' on clearing hundreds of acres of wood. This contented man pursued this challenge until physical limitations stopped him; then he turned to a garden and, finally, a window box. Whatever scale the challenge, humans use ``the same operating energy.'' After successes or failures, we adjust. Not only can people change (``the course of human development is much more open than used to be believed''), but ``the true capacities of a person are often inherently unknowable.'' On the other hand, we may have more trouble abandoning goals than behavior, and we may misread the probabilities for a second chance. Such generalities come across here as convincing because they evolve from logical argument supported by psychological theory and by examples ranging from the musicians in second-tier orchestras dealing with their status to foundation directors frustrated because they can't get ``hard information'' about their success. What Brim plainly and most disturbingly sees is that this country does not support those losing ground in their careers. With economic troubles all around and fortunes gone sour overnight, Brim forsakes the quick fix for thoughtful observations about how we drive ourselves and measure results. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.