Publishers Weekly Book Review

October 26th, 2009


The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond Lillian Lincoln Lambert, with Rosemary Brutico. Wiley, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-470-40166-8

This is an old-fashioned rags-to-riches story that traces Lambert’s upbringing as the daughter of God-fearing Virginia subsistence farmers to becoming the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Business School, in year 1969, and later attaining success as a Maryland entrepreneur. Told in straightforward, no-nonsense prose, Lambert’s memoir begins backward, from the shocking anecdote about arriving for a meeting of a group of powerful businesswomen in New York City in 1986 and being ushered to the kitchen. In fact, Lambert née Hobson worked as a maid when she first arrived in New York City in 1958, fresh out of high school from Ballsville, Va. (Her 1976 startup of a janitorial service in Maryland provides another irony.) Although her mother, a rare college graduate back in the rural South, wanted her daughter to go to college, Lambert resolved to support herself instead, faking references to get a job at Macy’s, for example. After working as a clerk-typist in Washington, D.C., she finally applied to Howard University, where her marketing professor, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, one of the few black graduates of Harvard’s business school told her she was “Harvard material” and should apply. She was accepted and in the fall of 1967 at 27 years old, she found herself homesick, overwhelmed by the work, but determined not to quit. Her account captures a historic epoch and offers some business strategies. (Jan.)

Read more about it here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6702298.html?industryid=47142

Post to Twitter

Leave a Reply

5 Responses to “Publishers Weekly Book Review”

  1. Comment by Lyndsey Robleto

    I always like to have a read about such things, my blog is related if you want to have a look round it please feel free. I have added yours to my bookmarks.

  2. Comment by Mariah Swails

    Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!

  3. Comment by Mariah Swails

    I have been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all webmasters and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much more useful than ever before.

  4. Comment by Hunter Forber

    I have been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all webmasters and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much more useful than ever before.

  5. Comment by Billy Bouska

    This is very intresting, You are a very skilled blogger. I have joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your great post.

viagra 100mg

Twitter links powered by Tweet This v1.8.2, a WordPress plugin for Twitter.