It’s been a rough two years for most of us as our country and the rest of the world grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic. Those two years may seem longer to if you didn’t think you would be able to overcome all the awful things you endured – the setbacks, the naysayers, tragedy. But you put one foot in front of the other and plodded toward the marks you set. What else could you do?
A lot, says communications consultant and author Robert L. Dilenschneider. His book, “Nailing It: How History’s Awesome Twentysomethings Got It Together,” aims to help you get more of the inspiration you need to hit the marks you’ve set. No matter how old you are or how horrific the obstacles you face, you can enhance your life, and sometimes the whole world in the process.
In short, you can “nail it” and Dilenschneider profiles 25 iconic individuals to prove it.
He mixes up the profiles to represent diverse races, nationalities, genders, and economic circumstances, so that readers can find fully relatable tales. And though the subtitle of “Nailing It” indicates “twentysomethings,” there’s a wide variety of ages represented, too.
Twenty-five profiles; 25 lessons in where inspiration comes from.
Maya Angelou survived rape as a child and several odd jobs to become a world-renowned poet and writer. It took Maria Tallchief, a Native American dancer, twenty-one years to realize her ballet dreams. African-American Jean-Michel Basquiat first achieved fame as a teenage graffiti artist. By the time he was 22 his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.
Albert Einstein was a poor student and worked at a clerk’s desk, processing patent applications when he was a young man, which gave him a chance to think. And self-trained Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenney developed a treatment for polio as a young woman, at a time when doctors were mostly only men.
Each profile in “Nailing It” offers a different kind of roadblock, describing what the individual’s circumstances were around the age of 25 and what he or she did at that time that led to a life of success.
You don’t have to be in a doleful state to enjoy “Nailing It.” The book’s 272 pages (paperback) of riveting biographies and sidebars will hold a reader’s attention to the end.
