Letters to My Daughters
分類: 图书,进口原版,Parenting & Families(养育与家庭),Family Relationships(家庭关系),Motherhood,
品牌: Mary Matalin
基本信息出版社:Simon & Schuster (2004年3月30日)精装:272页正文语种:英语ISBN:0743256085条形码:9780743256087商品尺寸:18 x 13 x 2.8 cm商品重量:327 g品牌:Simon & SchusterASIN:0743256085商品描述内容简介InLetters to My Daughters,famed political consultant and TV personality Mary Matalin shares the moral, ethical, and occasionally comic life lessons gleaned from her mother's experiences and her own. These intimate, personal letters range from the spiritual to the practical, from giving life to accepting death, from civic to personal responsibility, from looking and feeling good to dealing with those pesky boys, and more.Here's a sampling of the mother wisdom found in these pages:Crying isnota weakness; it's cathartic and cleansing. People who live life with the fullest commitment tend to cry a lot. It's a healthy expression of deep emotions. I don't like or trust people who don't or can't cry.When I tell you I understand what you're going through, it's not just because I remember what it felt like to be a teenage girl whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her will. It's because I'm a fifty-something whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her willat this very moment.And if you don't believe me, just ask your father.I believe in my heart of hearts that a life without faith is unanchored and unfulfilling. Without it, you're just wandering in the desert. You experience deeply that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- and the singing is damn good.Ma had a complex philosophy of sex, which I heard almost every day from age ten. "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough." Let's flash forward forty years and allow your mother to give you a twenty-first-century take on boys and S-E-X: "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough."...And the men in Washington think that's a compliment.A deep sense of loyalty can help you overcome almost any bump in the road. The disloyal may advantage themselves in some work situations, but their gains will be temporary, fleeting. They will fail their institutions, their colleagues, and worst of all, themselves.Filled with warmth, common sense, a belief in the values that keep families strong, and her trademark sense of humor, Mary Matalin's letters will inspire, guide, entertain, and inform. They're the perfect companion for any mother looking for a smart, sensible fellow traveler on the road to raising good daughters.编辑推荐Mary Matalin, the media savvy Republican strategist for two Bushes and one Cheney, switches to mama bear mode in a series of letters intended as a legacy for her two preteen daughters. Her advice reflects on formative experiences--losing her mother at age 26, working in the White House, marrying a soul mate from another political planet (high profile DemocratJames Carville), and surviving Hurricane Isabel. Each letter's theme is reflected in her greeting. For example, "Dear hormone handmaidens" gives equal time to menses and menopause," Dear lovelies" focuses on how not to become a dieter or fashion victim and "Dear unfortunate carriers of the Matalin DNA," acknowledges anxiety (hers and theirs). Matalin is at her best when translating family or political lessons in her own terms including her mother's quiet faith, her brother Stevie's gallant response to his bicycle accident and the climate of loyalty in Bush's White House. Her love for her daughters is wonderfully ferocious and funny--full of mom sound bites. After promising not to spy or pry she warns: "But from a distance, I'll be keeping track of you like a rat on a cheeto."Matalin's engaging and wise counsel alternates with advice flawed by her insistence on gender typecasting and the stale idea that "what defines us is ungettable by the other sex." This problem is magnified by the grating coarseness of her view of men. When Matalin tells her daughters, "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough," readers may wonder whether she intended these letters as keepsake for her daughters--or as a best seller for a wider audience.--Barbara Mackoff