LITMIR.BIZ

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      In no special order, my thanks to the following people for their help in bringing this advice to their young adults who need gentle shoves in the right directions.

      Even if my helpers didn't realize at the time how much they added to my writing of the book, they made it possible: Weld Henshaw, Bob and Debbie First, Robert Sprung, Yvonne Russell, Alan Miller, Mike Sandler, Fred Greenman, Bill and Judy Cowin, Dr. Stuart Mushlin, Jeff Levine, Andy Hunter, Bill Eisen, Joe Rooney, Suzanne DelVecchio, and Nat Bickford.

      And all the caring people at John Wiley & Sons.

      Above all, agent and friend, John Taylor “Ike” Williams, and his associate, Katherine Flynn.

      INTRODUCTION

      This is a book for all of you new grown-ups, out in the world for long enough to have experienced some early bumps in the road, and long enough to know how challenging this new century is for you, in all areas of your still-young lives.

      I speak to you as if you are my children, all of them relatively new grown-ups, and needing practical advice for all these new crossroads you face.

      I have advised, and still advise, thousands of people, in hundreds of professions and careers. And I've done this for more than 50 years. No rookie, no virgin either, in finding solutions to so many of life's problems.

      And as you all are at various new crossroads, I'm at another major one myself.

      After my last book, No One Ever Told Us That, had been out for several months, a young man knocked on my office door. He seemed to be in his late twenties or early thirties, in a suit and tie, with highly polished English shoes. I seldom see young people so turned out. He was holding a small package wrapped in bright paper, like a birthday present.

      “Do you have a minute?” he asked.

      “Not really, I said, “but come on in.”

      He held up the package. “This is for you,” he said. “You changed my life.”

      “How did I do that?” I said. “Although I'm flattered.”

      “I read your book,” he said. “In a chapter about the problems in almost all families there was a line. I've had issues with my family for years and it was eating me up, having to stifle my feelings. Your line was, ‘Love your family, but don't let them suck the oxygen out of the room.’ I kept thinking about that line. And it gave me the courage to finally speak out. When I did, years hiding these things just fell off my back. Thank you for changing my life.”

      I opened the present.

      “It's pictures done by my favorite artist,” he said. “He does graffiti.”

      I thanked him and asked him to tell me about himself, which he did. And then he said, “You know, you should write a book for us, for me and my friends. We're out of school for 10 years or more, married or not, kids or not, parents who you can tell are going to be needy, and jobs, careers we're not sure about. So many things we're not sure about. We need a lot of help.”

      This was a young man, suddenly honest about so many things, and not finding many answers, particularly in practical ways. After he left I had a flash about my first years in business, trying to scratch a living as a young stockbroker. My ambition then, in the early 1960s, was to make a six-dollar commission before lunch. My share would be one-third, or two dollars. I figured that two bucks would pay for lunch, and whatever I made in the afternoon would be gravy. Before I had launched in this career, I mentioned to my father that I was considering business school.

      “You've been in school long enough,” he said. “Time to go to work.”

      Like the young man knocking on my door, I knew little or nothing about so much. And now I was out in life, a stranger in a

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