En busca de la felycidad

by Chris Gardner Narrated by Bob Borquez

Overview

A la edad de veinte años y después de haber salido de la Marina, Chris Gardner, llegó a San Francisco para continuar una carrera prometedora en la medicina. Considerado un hijo prodigio de la investigación científica, sorprendió a todos y a sí mismo estableciendo su punto de vista en el competitivo mundo de las finanzas. Sin embargo, apenas había entrado a una posición de gran nivel en una empresa de prestigio, Gardner se encontró atrapado en una red de circunstancias increíblemente difíciles que lo dejaron como parte de los ciudadanos sin hogar y con un hijo pequeño. Motivado por la promesa que se hizo a sí mismo de nunca abandonar a sus propios hijos, los dos pasaron casi un año moviéndose entre refugios, moteles, comedores públicos, e incluso dormir en el baño público de una estación de metro. Gardner nunca cedió ante la desesperación e hizo una transformación asombrosa pasando de ser parte de la ciudad pobre e invisible a convertirse en un miembro de gran influencia en su área financiera. Más que un libro de memorias del éxito financiero de Gardner, esta es la historia de un hombre que rompió el ciclo de su propia familia en contraste con hombres que abandonan a sus hijos. Legendario, triunfante e increíblemente honesto, este libro evoca a héroes como Horatio Alger y Antwone Fishe, y apela a la esencia del sueño americano.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Library Journal

Gardner was born in Milwaukee in 1954, seemingly with the odds stacked against him. Not knowing his father and living with his mother, horribly abusive stepfather, and assorted half-sisters, he could have easily succumbed to the drugs, violence, and other atrocities available to young African American males. Instead, Gardner was told early on by his mother that he could achieve anything he put his mind to, and so he began setting and achieving his goals. Serving briefly in the navy and initially thinking of a medical career, he eventually settled in San Francisco with the aim of becoming a successful stock broker. Just as his dreams began to materialize, he found himself homeless and the single father of a toddler. The most unique and significant relationship in this memoir is the one between Gardner and his son; he was determined to be the father he never had. The Pursuit of Happyness is slated to become a major motion picture, and if the narrative can be tightened and secondary characters sufficiently fleshed out, it should be an interesting film. Andre Blake does a good job conveying Gardner's emotional highs and lows, but he can sometimes be a bit too theatrical. The overall quality of the production is excellent. Recommended for all school and public libraries. Nicole A. Cooke, Montclair State Univ. Lib., NJ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner. Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn't always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie "I ain't your goddamn daddy!" Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did "the dozens" with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner's talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now. Well-told and admonitory. Film rights to Columbia, to star Will Smith and Thandie Newton

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173573988
Publisher:	HarperCollins Espanol
Publication date:	05/26/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Language:	Spanish

Read an Excerpt

The Pursuit of Happyness

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By Chris Gardner

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Chris Gardner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060744863

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Chapter One

Candy

In my memory's sketch of early childhood, drawn by an artist of the impressionist school, there is one image that stands out above the rest -- which when called forth is preceded by the mouth-watering aroma of pancake syrup warming in a skillet and the crackling, bubbling sounds of the syrup transforming magically into homemade pull candy. Then she comes into view, the real, real pretty woman who stands at the stove, making this magic just for me.

Or at least, that's how it feels to a boy of three years old. There is another wonderful smell that accompanies her presence as she turns, smiling right in my direction, as she steps closer to where I stand in the middle of the kitchen -- waiting eagerly next to my sister, seven-year-old Ophelia, and two of the other children, Rufus and Pookie, who live in this house. As she slips the cooling candy off the wooden spoon, pulling and breaking it into pieces that she brings and places in my outstretched hand, as she watches me happily gobbling up the tasty sweetness, her wonderful fragrance is there again. Not perfume or anything floral or spicy -- it's just a clean, warm, good smell that wraps around me like a Superman cape, making me feel strong, special, and loved -- even if Idon't have words for those concepts yet.

Though I don't know who she is, I sense a familiarity about her, not only because she has come before and made candy in this same fashion, but also because of how she looks at me -- like she's talking to me from her eyes, saying, You remember me, don't you?

At this point in childhood, and for most of the first five years of my life, the map of my world was broken strictly into two territories -- the familiar and the unknown. The happy, safe zone of the familiar was very small, often a shifting dot on the map, while the unknown was vast, terrifying, and constant.

What I did know by the age of three or four was that Ophelia was my older sister and best friend, and also that we were treated with kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, the adults whose house we lived in. What I didn't know was that the Robinsons' house was a foster home, or what that meant. Our situation -- where our real parents were and why we didn't live with them, or why we sometimes did live with uncles and aunts and cousins -- was as mysterious as the situations of the other foster children living at the Robinsons'.

What mattered most was that I had a sister who looked out for me, and I had Rufus and Pookie and the other boys to follow outside for fun and mischief. All that was familiar, the backyard and the rest of the block, was safe turf where we could run and play games like tag, kick-the-can, and hide-and-seek, even after dark. That is, except, for the house two doors down from the Robinsons.

Every time we passed it I had to almost look the other way, just knowing the old white woman who lived there might suddenly appear and put an evil curse on me -- because, according to Ophelia and everyone else in the neighborhood, the old woman was a witch.

When Ophelia and I passed by the house together once and I confessed that I was scared of the witch, my sister said, "I ain't scared," and to prove it she walked right into the front yard and grabbed a handful of cherries off the woman's cherry tree.

Ophelia ate those cherries with a smile. But within the week I was in the Robinsons' house when here came Ophelia, racing up the steps and stumbling inside, panting and holding her seven-year-old chest, describing how the witch had caught her stealing cherries and grabbed her arm, cackling, "I'm gonna get you!"

Scared to death as she was now, Ophelia soon decided that since she had escaped an untimely death once, she might as well go back to stealing cherries. Even so, she made me promise to avoid the strange woman's house. "Now, remember," Ophelia warned, "when you walk by, if you see her on the porch, don't you look at her and never say nuthin' to her, even if she calls you by name."

I didn't have to promise because I knew that nothing and no one could ever make me do that. But I was still haunted by nightmares so real that I could have sworn I actually snuck into her house and found myself in the middle of a dark, creepy room where I was surrounded by an army of cats, rearing up on their back legs, baring their claws and fangs. The nightmares were so intense that for the longest time I had an irrational fear and dislike of cats. At the same time, I was not entirely convinced that this old woman was in fact a witch. Maybe she was just different. Since I'd never seen any white people other than her, I figured they might all be like that.

Then again, because my big sister was my only resource for explaining all that was unknown, I believed her and accepted her explanations. But as I pieced together fragments of information about our family over the years, mainly from Ophelia and also from some of our uncles and aunts, I found the answers much harder to grasp.

How the real pretty woman who came to make the candy fit into the puzzle, I was never told, but something old and wise inside me knew that she was important. Maybe it was how she seemed to pay special attention to me, even though she was just as nice to Ophelia and the other kids, or maybe it was how she and I seemed to have a secret way of talking without words. In our unspoken conversation, I understood her to be saying that seeing me happy made her even happier, and so . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner Copyright © 2006 by Chris Gardner. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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