In this very approachable and practical book, Clint Schumacher draws upon his experience as a father, husband, lawyer, and coach to provide inspiration for those facing adversity and struggle. He organizes his book into short essays on "decisions" that resilient people make; each essay contains several stories from the author's own experience as well as from his extensive research on resilient individuals in American history.
I found the book to be a quick read. If you have just a few minutes to read, you can read a chapter or two and then pick the book back up later without losing much. Occasionally, Schumacher will refer to an anecdote or suggestion in a prior chapter, but he does a good job of recalling enough of the prior material to help out a reader who can only engage with the text for a few minutes at a time.
I also found the stories to be well researched, presented with just the right amount of detail, and supportive of the author's main points. The author retells these stories without the heavy-handed moralizing you often see in books in this genre.
I will admit that I found it difficult to imagine how I might act on some of the advice in the book. For example, the chapter "Decide to Transform Your Pain" asks the reader to consider how they might channel their grief over a personal tragedy into positive action that might help others. I think that if I experienced a personal tragedy, I might need more help processing my grief before I could turn that positive energy outward. But I appreciate the author's intent, and the examples he provides are inspiring. Most of the other chapters, such as the one on connecting with others and the one on developing an internal script, had ample practical advice and contained ideas that I had not considered prior to reading the book.
What I appreciated most about the book is that Schumacher admits his own vulnerabilities and incorporates these into his essays in an authentic way.
What bothered me most about the book is that as a social scientist, I read many of the stories through a different lens - to me, some of the difficulties described in the author's stories lie downstream from social failures and inequities. Schumacher clearly writes from a perspective of individualism: it is your responsibility, first and foremost, to find a way to clear the obstacles in front of you. I appreciate the perspective from which the author is writing: if you find yourself facing adversity, in an immediate practical sense it doesn't matter whether your struggle is the result of an injustice, hard luck, or something else. You have to find a way to push through, and can't wait for society to fix itself. I think more than anything, this left me hoping that Schumacher might consider a future book about what we owe each other in a broad sense - how society might better address adversity without heading down the futile path of trying to eliminate it.
But viewing this book on its own merits, it is a solid contribution and a good, practical text for those who could use some inspiration and encouragement. I recommend reading it.
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How to navigate—and thrive—adversity.
If there were clearer, more practical steps to thriving through adversity I’m not aware of them. It’s ‘Tools of the Titans’ for everyone else, with insightful references—both richly personal and historically powerful—for charting one’s own lifeline, and should remain dog-eared, marked up, and front of shelf for years.
