Everybody's Got Something

by Robin Roberts, Veronica Chambers

Overview

The beloved Good Morning America anchor shares the incredible journey that's been her life so far and the lessons she learned along the way as she battled breast cancer and a rare blood disorder and dealt with the death of her mother.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455581993
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/22/2014
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Robin Roberts is the anchor of ABC's morning show Good Morning America. Under her leadership, the broadcast has won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Morning program. Prior to that, Roberts was a contributor to ESPN. She is a native of Mississippi Gulf Coast and currently resides in New York City.

Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir, Mama's Girl, which has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges throughout the country. Her other nonfiction books include Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation and The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl's Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery. She has also written more than a dozen books for children and spent two seasons as an executive story editor for the CW's hit series, Girlfriends. A graduate of Simon's Rock College at Bard, she lives with her husband and daughter in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

"Delivered with candor and optimism, Everybody's Got Something is a remarkable book that offers a blueprint for handling crises with grace and faith."

—BookPage

"With the infectious personality for which she's known, Roberts details the support of family and friends and the people she's met in her life and career who've inspired her by overcoming theirown challenges with the "something" that everybody inevitably faces."

—Booklist

From the Publisher

This follow-up to TV news anchor Roberts’s previous audiobooks offers personal growth principles abstracted from her experiences. She has a deep, athletic-sounding voice that sounds consistently clear but not as spontaneous as she appears in her television work. The assertiveness in her voice works well to express the determination she had to summon when facing a life-threatening disease that required a bone marrow transplant in 2012. Her fans will enjoy the chatty narratives about her celebrity life and medical travails that dominate this memoir. What everyone facing a health challenge will savor is how Roberts uses her grounding in Southern culture to remind us of the importance of gratitude, hope, and strong connections with family members. T.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2014 - AudioFile

2014-03-18
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow. The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother's health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete's mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author's best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts' family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. "[I]f there's one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you," she writes, "it's that time is not to be wasted." At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist's battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother's passing.

Kirkus Reviews