Review by Choice Review
Sandberg, COO at Facebook and author of the national bestseller Lean In (CH, Dec'13, 51-2183), and Grant (management and psychology, Wharton School, Univ. of Pennsylvania) focus on the grieving process and becoming resilient amid tragedy and loss. During a travel getaway, Sandberg discovers her husband's lifeless body on a hotel gym floor. Readers follow the complexities of her grieving in a first-person, intimate account sprinkled with stories of resilient individuals around the world, along with coping strategies that may be helpful to readers. Though Sandberg is affluent and her boss is Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and CEO, she notes that not every individual has the workplace flexibility and compassion afforded to her, making the case throughout the book for national policy and social changes. Sandberg promotes "the Platinum Rule: treat others as they want to be treated," as each person has specific personal needs and grieves uniquely. Raising resilient children after loss is also briefly discussed. To make for smooth reading, the studies cited are listed at the end of the book under a "Notes" section--this categorizes the book as less academic and more suited for a general audience. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. --Jorge Enrique Perez, Florida International University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Four years after 'Lean In,' Sheryl Sandberg shares new perspectives gained from grief. YOU COULD ALMOST HEAR the collective gasp when news broke, in May 2015, that the internet entrepreneur Dave Goldberg had died suddenly while on vacation in Mexico with his wife, Sheryl Sandberg. Their marriage had become a public one ever since the publication, two years earlier, of "Lean In," her book about women and leadership. In it she had written some revolutionary things about marriage (she called it having a "partner," but the book was so much about redefining gender roles that she clearly seemed to be talking about husbands). Deciding to get married - and the choice of whom to marry - weren't just central to one's private life, she wrote. Together they made up the "most important career decision that a woman makes." She observed that most women at the top aren't the lonely, single women of clichés; they are married women whose husbands support their ambitions and take equal responsibility for making a home. She said that her great success (she is the chief operating officer of Facebook, which has made her a billionaire) would have been impossible without the unwavering support of her husband. Now, in the cruelest way, she had lost him. "Lean In" sparked a movement, but it had its critics, among them single mothers, women who worked outside corporate America, and those who could not afford to hire the nannies and helpers upon whom the Sandberg-Goldberg household clearly depended. There were also those who thought the principal value underlying the book was flawed. They didn't want to find ways to make their work more exhilarating; they wanted to find ways to accommodate it to their lives as parents. The tragedy was a vicious reminder of the truth we work hard to forget: Life is cruel. It will casually take away the people we love the most. Even the vaunted "C-suite" job is cold comfort when it cost you hours with a lost loved one. Now, two years after Goldberg's death, Sandberg has written a new book, "Option B," which forthrightly addresses all of these issues. It is a remarkable achievement: generous, honest, almost unbearably poignant. It reveals an aspect of Sandberg's character that "Lean In" had suggested but - because of the elitism at its center - did not fully demonstrate: her impulse to be helpful. She has little to gain by sharing, in excruciating detail, the events of her life over the past two years. This is a book that will be quietly passed from hand to hand, and it will surely offer great comfort to its intended readers. "I have terrible news," she told her children, after flying home from Mexico. "Daddy died." The intimacy of detail that fills the book is unsettling; there were times I felt that I had come across someone's secret knowledge, that I shouldn't have been in possession of something that seemed so deeply private. But the candor and simplicity with which she shares all of it - including her children's falling to the ground, unable to walk to the grave when they arrive at the cemetery - is a kind of gift. She was shielded from the financial disaster that often accompanies sudden widowhood, but in every other way she was unprotected from great pain. As she did in the memorable Facebook post composed a month after the death, she reports turning in her misery to the psychologist Adam Grant, a friend who had flown to California to attend the funeral and is an expert in the field of human resilience. She told him that her greatest fear was that her children would never be happy again. He "walked me through the data," she writes, and what she learns offers comfort. Getting "walked through the data," is as modern a response to grief as the notion that "resilience" is some kind of science. The book includes several illustrative stories that seem to come from Grant's research, but they are not memorable. It is Sandberg whose story commands our riveted attention, and it is her natural and untutored responses to the horror that are most moving. "This is the second worst moment of our lives," she tells her sobbing children at the cemetery. "We lived through the first and we will live through this. It can only get better from here." That is grief: Somehow, you find a language; somehow you get through it. No research could have helped her in that moment. She is the one who knew what to do and what to say. They were her children, and she knew how to comfort them. Death humbles each of us in different ways. Suddenly a single mother, Sandberg realized how hollow her "Lean In" chapter about the importance of fully involved husbands ("partners") must have been to unmarried women. If only she had known how little time she would have with her husband, she thinks, she would have spent more of it with him. But that's not the way life works; Dave Goldberg fell in love with a woman who wanted to lead, not one who wanted to wait for him to come home from the office. The unbearable clarity that follows a death blessedly fades with time. We couldn't live with it every day. Sheryl Sandberg followed the oldest data set in the world, the one that says: The children are young, and you must keep going. Slowly the fog began to lift. She found she had something useful to offer at a meeting; she got the children through their first birthdays without their father; she began to have one O.K. day and then another. She made it through a year, all of the "milestone days" had passed and something began to revive within her. Grief is the final act of love, and recovery from it is the necessary betrayal on which the future depends. There is only this one life, and we are the ones who are here to live it. The unbearable clarity that follows a death blessedly fades with time. We couldn't live with it every day. CAITLIN FLANAGAN is a contributing editor at The Atlantic.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 24, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sandberg, author of the mega-hit Lean In (2013) and COO for Facebook, teams up with Wharton's top professor, Grant, also a best-selling author, most recently of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016), in this powerful treatise about overcoming life's toughest challenges. After Sheryl's husband, Dave, passed away unexpectedly in 2015, she was consumed by grief and terrified that their two children wouldn't have a normal, healthy childhood without their father. With the support of family, friends, and psychologist Grant, she was able to find her way back to happiness. Sandberg and Grant explore how we deal with adversity, but perhaps more important, they discuss how we can be fiercely resilient in the face of tragedy. Sandberg embraced the idea that when option A fails you, you must find another way. And so she moved on to option B. Sandberg and Grant weave her personal journey into a larger, more inclusive framework of adversity in this well-researched book of facts and sound advice that will serve as a guide to those impacted by life's wicked curve balls. Option B is not simply a self-help book for those who are suffering; rather, it is a richly informed, engaging read that will broaden readers' understanding of empathy and reveal the strength of the human spirit.--Smith, Patricia Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sandberg (Lean In), the COO of Facebook, and Grant (Originals), a Wharton professor of psychology, affirm in their helpful and hopeful new book that "there's no one way to grieve and no one way to comfort." For those who have suffered through a tragedy, this book provides helpful advice in the form of case studies, expert commentary, coping mechanisms, and, most of all, hope, expounding upon "the capacity of the human spirit to persevere." Sandberg draws on her own pain around the sudden death of her husband, Dave, and shares what she has learned about resilience with a tone that is raw and candid. Her experiences led her to ask how others have dealt with and survived such adversity. These interviewees supply their stories, and Grant shares his perspective and knowledge as a psychologist. Both authors show how positive outcomes, such as strengthened relationships and a greater sense of gratitude, can be gleaned from awful situations. Those suffering as well as those seeking to provide comfort should find both solace and wisdom in this book, which observes, "Resilience is not a fixed personality trait. It's a lifelong project." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Best-selling author (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will To Lead) and Facebook COO Sandberg teams with psychologist and writer Grant (Originals) to share her heartbreaking account of coping with husband Dave Goldberg's unexpected death at age 48. While the authors concede that everyone's story is different, they explore not only what they've learned about resilience but what others have gone through in order to find joy and strength after difficulty. Sandberg and Grant demonstrate how people can discover a new purpose in life by seeking meaning in tragedy and helping others escape the quagmire of despair. -VERDICT This captivating memoir -offers genuine hope. Highly -recommended. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A memoir of the loss of a husband and finding a path forward beyond the grieving process.Sandberg (Lean In for Graduates: With New Chapters by Experts, Including Find Your First Job, Negotiate Your Salary, and Own Who You Are, 2014, etc.) was living a life with all of the fulfillments one could hope for. After a comfortable upbringing and education at Harvard, she worked her way up to become a vice president at Google and eventually the COO of Facebook. She presented a popular TED talk and then wrote a book on her "lean in" conceptualization of women in the workplace. However, no amount of professional accomplishment could prepare her for the sudden passing of her husband, Dave, in 2015, after which she had to figure out how to carry on as a mother of two and make the shattered pieces fit back together. This moving book is the result. Writing with Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, 2016, etc.), a highly rated professor at Wharton, Sandberg explores how to weather the storm of grief, applying concrete skills in addition to more complex theories of psychology about how to find meaning in life-changing circumstances. Going deeper and broader than the commonly understood stages of grief, the authors look at different factors that can stunt recovery after a losse.g., self-blame and the fear that the loss will permeate every aspect of life indefinitely. Sandberg shows her struggle with finding a comfort level regarding the sharing of her emotional status and learning when to push the level as well as when to respect it. The challenges of moving forward are immense beyond understanding for anyone outside of the experience; this accounting of Sandberg's resilience does for the process of grieving what her previous work has done for women in the workplace. A book that provides illuminating ways to make headway through the days when there doesn't seem to be a way forward. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
