Ambition, Deborah L. Rhode
Ambition, Deborah L. Rhode
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Ambition
For What?

Author: Deborah L. Rhode

Narrator: Pam Ward

Unabridged: 10 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/21/2021


Synopsis

Ambition is a dominant force in for human civilization, driving its greatest achievements and most horrific abuses. Our striving has brought art, airplanes, and antibiotics, as well as wars, genocide, and despotism. This mixed record raises obvious concerns about how we can channel ambition in the most productive directions.

In Ambition, Deborah L. Rhode offers a comprehensive and engaging survey of the topic that focuses in particular on the nature of ambition in contemporary American life. To do this, she first explores three central focuses of ambition—recognition, power, and money—and argues that an excessive preoccupation with these external markers for success can be self-defeating for individuals and toxic for society. She then shifts to discussing the obstacles to constructive ambition and the consequences when ambitions are skewed or blocked by inequality and identity-related characteristics such as gender, race, class, and national origin. Rhode further addresses the ways that families, schools, and colleges might play a more effective role in developing positive ambition. Finally, she examines what sorts of ambitions contribute to sustained well-being, such as building relationships and contributing to society, rather than chasing extrinsic rewards such as wealth, power, and fame.

About Deborah L. Rhode

Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, the director of the Center on the Legal Profession, and the director of the Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford University. She was the founding president of the International Association of Legal Ethics, a president of the Association of American Law Schools, a chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, the founding director of Stanford's Center on Ethics, and a former trustee of Yale University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on March 26, 2016

This book has given me an interesting new lens through which to view people and their actions and underlying motivations, and in fact, is most interesting when turned inward towards myself. I immediately disliked this book when I started the prologue, because without having read the rest of the book......more

Goodreads review by M on July 12, 2017

I have read this book three times. A must read during the aging process. Puts success and goals into true perspective. Read again for the 4th time..........more

Goodreads review by Vijayshree on May 30, 2024

The book deeply explains the human nature of ambition and seeking goals. In our little world, we want to conquer the small and big hills that we encounter in life. Every human being has the drive for growth and mastery. The best part is that it is not prescriptive of what we must or must not do. The......more

Goodreads review by N on August 31, 2024

Effortlessly straddles the continuum between useless and unuseful without being infuriating......more