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Father's Day: a time to celebrate dads
Ebony, June, 2006
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (Amistad, $25.95) by Chris Gardner, with Quincy Troupe, is the riveting story of a man who triumphs over tremendous obstacles to achieve success. At the age of 20, Milwaukee native Gardner, just out of the U.S. Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine.
He surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. But no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him and his toddler son homeless. The two spent almost a year moving from home less shelter to homeless shelter. Still, Gardner did not give up. In the hope of starting over, he began training to become a stockbroker at a brokerage firm in San Francisco. His hard work paid off. He rose like a phoenix from the streets of San Francisco and landed amid the concrete canyons of Wall Street, where he tackled the machinations of high finance. Today, he is the head of his own multimillion-dollar brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co. THE PURSUIT is being considered for a major Hollywood motion picture, starring Will Smith, the publisher says. In another awe-inspiring story of fatherly love and dedication, Joe Massengale, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, writes SIX LESSONS FOR SIX SONS: AN EXTRAORDINARY FATHER, A SIMPLE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS (Harmony Books, $23), Massengale tells how, as an impoverished child in Marshall, Texas, he would tell classmates how he was going to move to Los Angeles to get rich and one day return in triumph. He did. But more important than the material wealth that Massengale gained over the years are the six lessons he learned and taught his six sons. The lessons are confidence, fortitude, pride, persistence, fearlessness, and focus. "We had to be confident of ourselves," he writes in Lesson I on confidence. "Not arrogant; not difficult. But confident that we were as good as anyone and had the same right as anyone had to be here and to work hard." The book, written with David Clow, distills the stories of Massengale's life and those of his sons into teachings that are a powerful formula for success.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
