The Pursuit of Happyness » (Abridged, 5 CDs, 6 Hours)

Chris Gardner is the chief executive officer of Gardner Rich & Company, a multimillion-dollar brokerage with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. An avid philanthropist and motivational speaker, Gardner is committed to many organizations -- particularly those related to education -- and was recently the recipient of the Father of the Year Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative. A Milwaukee native, Gardner has two children and resides in Chicago and New York.

The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street.

At the age of twenty, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving from shelters, "HO-tels", and soup-lines. Never giving in to despair, Gardner makes an astonishing transformation from being part of the city's invisible to being a powerful player ...

Publishers Weekly

Gardner's inspiring rags-to-riches memoir of his transformation from homeless single father to philanthropic owner of a multimillion-dollar brokerage house somehow has less of an impact in audio than on paper. Blake has an excellent, manly voice, perfect intonation and excellent streetwise cursing abilities (a crucial part of Gardner's account of his relationship with his stepfather). Yet as good as the narrator is, by the third CD listeners may not be able to shake the feeling that he's an actor reading someone else's words. Since Gardner's love of jazz is a running theme, the evocative jazz trumpet music at the beginning and end of each CD is appropriate; even more between-tracks music might have been effective where the narrator's pauses are not long or dramatic enough (say, between one sentence where he is with his biological father in Louisiana and the next, at work in his brokerage office). This is a moving story whose audio version might have been better served with more dramatic devices. Simultaneous release with Amistad hardcover. (Reviews, Mar. 6) (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.