Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

From Barnes & Noble

The beaming face on the cover isn't an actress or model; it belongs to Sheryl Sandberg, the author of this book and, by the valuations of Fortune, one of the ten most powerful women in business. Facebook's Chief Operating Officer has been a key driver in the billion-user social network not just popular, but also profitable. Her Lean In isn't, however, a company history; it is an inspiring tutorial on how women can lead, even if that means learn to juggle the responsibilities of work and a family. (Sandberg is married and has two children.) To offer aspirants encouragement and advice, she draws on own experiences and those of other working women. Bound to receive prominent reviews.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

“Lively, entertaining, urgent, and yes, even courageous . . . Lean In is both a radical read and incredibly accessible . . . While it’s obvious that women have much to gain from reading Sandberg’s book, so do men—perhaps even more so . . . Lean In is the beginning of an important and long-overdue conversation in the United States—but it will only be a national conversation, and one that endures, if men do their part and lean in, too.”
            —Michael Cohen, The Guardian
 
 “Grade: A . . . a rallying cry to working women . . . Lean In is the most cogent piece of writing I’ve encountered that speaks to the internal and institutional forces that can trip up an ambitious woman, whether she has a baby on board or not . . . The wisdom she shares here is a gift that all women (and all partners who support them, in the workplace or at home) should give themselves.”
            —Meeta Agrawal, Entertainment Weekly
 
 “If you loved Sheryl Sandberg’s incredible TEDTalk on why we have too few women leaders, or simply believe as I do that we need equality in the boardroom, then this book is for you. As Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg has firsthand experience of why having more women in leadership roles is good for business as well as society. Lean In is essential reading for anyone interested in righting the injustice of this inequality.” 
           —Sir Richard Branson, chairman, the Virgin Group
 
“Sandberg’s message matters deeply: it has a shot at bringing about a cultural change that would improve the lives of all women.”
           —Judith Warner, TIME
 
“A muscular manifesto on the gender inequities of the professional world . . . Sandberg is making a disruptive, crucial observation that puts her very much in line with Friedan: All is not just in the gendered world, and we should be talking urgently about how to make it better.”
           —Rebecca Traister, Los Angeles Times
 
“No one who reads this book will ever doubt that Sandberg herself has the will to lead, not to mention the requisite commitment, intelligence, and ferocious work ethic . . . Sandberg is not just tough, however. She also comes across as compassionate, funny, honest, and likable . . . Most important, she is willing to draw the curtain aside on her own insecurities . . . Lean In is full of gems, slogans that ambitious women would do well to pin up on their wall . . . I nodded in recognition at so much of what Sandberg recounts, page after page.” 
           —Anne-Marie Slaughter, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
 
“Pivotal . . . It’s probably not an overstatement to say Sandberg is embarking on the most ambitious mission to reboot feminism and reframe discussions of gender since the launch of Ms. magazine in 1971. The thing is, she’s in a pretty good position to pull it off.”
            —Belinda Luscombe, TIME
 
“Important . . . This is a great moment for all of us—women and men—to acknowledge that the current male-dominated model of success isn’t working for women, and it’s not working for men, either . . . The world needs women to redefine success beyond money and power. We need a third metric, based on our well-being, our health, our ability to unplug and recharge and renew ourselves, and to find joy in both our job and the rest of our life.”
            —Arianna Huffington, Forbes
 
“I’ll bet most [women] will be thrilled by Lean In. I suspect at least a few men will read this book and think, Oh no, they’re starting to catch on.”
            —Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair
 
“A lucidly written, well-argued, and unabashedly feminist take on women and work, replete with examples from the author’s life.”
            —Julia Klein, USA Today
 
 “Having read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, I can testify that it addresses internalized oppression, opposes the external barriers that create it, and urges women to support each other to fight both. It argues not only for women’s equality in the workplace, but men’s equality in home-care and child-rearing. Even its critics are making a deep if inadvertent point: Only in women is success viewed as a barrier to giving advice.” 
           —Gloria Steinem
 
“Lean In has plenty for feminists and all women to applaud—and learn from . . . I’m glad Sandberg is speaking out. I’m glad she’s using her platform to help give women the tools to succeed, and to encourage all of us to go out and get what we want. The real strength of Lean In is in its Rosie the Riveter 2.0 message: ‘You can do it! Here’s how.’ . . . A crucial call to action.”
            —Jill Filipovic, The Guardian
 
“A call to live fearlessly . . . Lean In is a memoir, a self-help book, a career management guide, and a feminist manifesto . . . Let’s hope this is a book that is read as much as talked about.”
            —Marion Winik, Newsday
 
“Equality is a project everybody must work on together. For too long, achieving equality has been seen as women’s burden . . . By knowing this story, men will become more sophisticated thinkers and actors when it comes to gender . . . Lean In contains a whole lot for men to think seriously about . . . Men just need to read it.”
            —Patrick Thibodeau, CIO Magazine
 
 “Unapologetic . . . Sandberg is using her power and influence to try and improve the world . . . Sandberg’s most powerful rhetorical device in the book is a saturation of stats that are sometimes shocking and sometimes reverberating—but always the kind that make you reevaluate what’s going on around us.”
            —Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider
 
“Sandberg’s voice is modest, humorous, warm, and enthusiastic . . . You don’t have to be climbing the corporate ladder—or, as Sandberg would call it, the jungle gym—to find her message useful. Don’t marry a man who isn’t egalitarian? Good plan! Be more confident? Excellent advice . . . I’m buying a copy of Lean In for my daughter and one for my stepdaughter, too.”
            —Katha Pollitt, The Nation
 
“Nuanced, persuasive, and brave . . . All of us—women and men alike—who care about creating a more equitable America ought to take her message to heart.”
            —Jane Eisner, The Forward
 
“After reading Lean In and listening to Sheryl, I realize that, while I believe I am relatively enlightened, I have not consistently walked the talk . . . I believe we—together—need to drive a fundamental culture change and it is up to us as leaders to make this change happen. What we have been doing hasn’t worked, and it is time to adjust . . . We have an opportunity to make a tremendous difference, and in so doing benefit our people, out culture, our company, and, just maybe, the world.”
            —John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
 
“Tremendously relevant . . . necessary . . . Lean In is more about being bold than it is about being female . . . Sandberg can reach beyond boundaries of age, success level, and gender to include all of those who have the privilege of playing on the jungle gym of corporations, academia, and government.”
            —Sharon Poczter, Forbes      
 
“A rallying cry for both genders to continue the hard work of previous generations toward a more equitable division of voice, power, and leadership . . . Told with candor and filled with a mix of anecdote and annotated fact, Lean In inspires women to find their passion, pursue it with gusto, and ‘lean in’ to leadership roles in the workplace and the world.”
            —Linda Stankard, BookPage
 
“I plan to buy Lean In for our three grown daughters and daughter-in-law . . . In our family, and in families across the country, may the conversations begin.”
            —Connie Schultz, Washington Post
 
“I’m guessing that the average boardroom doesn’t have much better gender equality than a team of cave hunters attacking a woolly mammoth 30,000 years ago. So what gives? A provocative answer comes from Sheryl Sandberg, who has written a smart book that attributes the gender gap, in part, to chauvinism and corporate obstacles—but also, in part, to women who don’t aggressively pursue opportunities . . . there is something real and important in what she says.”
           —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
 
 “Giving women the tools and skills they need to take themselves and society—worldwide—to the next level.”
           —Leslie L. Kossoff, Technorati.com
 
“Compelling . . . Sandberg writes with sophistication and thoughtful reflection . . . a book that has a powerful message but that is also full of personal vulnerability and first-hand anecdotes, packed with statistics and footnoted studies that back her points.”
            —Susan Adams, Forbes
 
“Her ideas are reasonable, thoughtful—and necessary.”
           —Michelle Goldberg, The Daily Beast
 
“When was the last time anybody talked this much about a women’s place in the world, period? Sandberg’s Lean In is opening up the dialogue—and, in true Silicon Valley fashion, she’s made it scalable . . . It’s put words to what we’d long felt but couldn’t quite articulate; the insecurities, the self-doubt, the fear that causes us to keep our hands down. Because, whether we’d recognized it or not, each of us . . . had been grappling with precisely what Sandberg aims to conquer . . . She’s also managed to bridge a gap that has mystified many an activist before her: reaching women who both self-identify as feminists, and those who don’t.”
           —Jessica Bennett, NYMag.com
 
“This is a book every young woman needs . . . I see her as an inspiration.”
           —Colleen Leahey, Fortune
 
“A lucidly written, well-argued and unabashedly feminist take on women and work, replete with examples from the author’s life. It draws on the ideas of no less an icon than Gloria Steinem, a Sandberg friend, and on recent research highlighting the double binds women face as they negotiate the corridors of power.”
           —Julia M. Klein, USA Today
 
“To get a sense of how I reacted to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, look no further than the stars and exclamation points that fill the margins of my review copy . . . Among its merits is the way Sandberg doesn’t shy away from describing her own struggles to take risks at work, to ask for what she wants, to negotiate, to find an equal partner.”
           —Alexandra Chang, Wired
 
“Sheryl provides practical suggestions for managing and overcoming the challenges that arise on the ‘jungle gym’ of career advancement. I nodded my head in agreement and laughed out loud as I read these pages. Lean In is a superb, witty, candid, and meaningful read for women (and men) of all generations.” 
            —Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state
 
“To tackle society’s most pressing problems we need to unleash the leadership of both women and men. Lean In shows us the path and is an absolutely invaluable resource for the next generation of leaders and those who support them.”
            —Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO, Teach for America
 
“For the past five years, I’ve sat at a desk next to Sheryl and I’ve learned something from her almost every day. She has a remarkable intelligence that can cut through complex processes and find solutions to the hardest problems. Lean In combines Sheryl’s ability to synthesize information with her understanding of how to get the best out of people. The book is smart and honest and funny. Her words will help all readers—especially men—to become better and more effective leaders.”
            —Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO, Facebook
 
“Sheryl is a unique business leader because of her versatility and breadth. She has the two traits that are common in every successful leader I have known: curiosity and determination. Sheryl brings all of her insight to Lean In, an important new book that companies can use to get the most out of their talent. With her ideas and actions, Sheryl will help to define leadership in the years to come.”
            —Jeff Immelt, CEO, General Electric
 
“The key to opening some of life’s most difficult doors is already in our hands. Sheryl’s book reminds us that we can reach within ourselves to achieve greatness.” 
            —Alicia Keys

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review

I began reading Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead when the backlash against the book was just getting under way. Many of the columnists and bloggers who condemned the Facebook COO's manifesto on women and work clearly hadn't read it and were attacking not the message but the messenger, described snidely by Maureen Dowd as someone with a "grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women's revolution." But despite what you may have heard, Lean In isn't the work of a tone- deaf elitist blaming other women for failing to achieve as much as she has; rather, it's an explicitly feminist rallying cry whose purpose is to help women make gains in the workplace.

Sandberg, who holds a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Harvard and was in on the ground floor of Google before moving to Facebook, is not blind to the reality that most women's circumstances are nowhere near as rarefied as hers. On the other hand, she refers early and often to the fact that women are generally struggling simply to make ends meet and provide for their families. Sandberg acknowledges that "parts of this book will be most relevant to women fortunate enough to have choices about how much and when and where to work."

Those very women are outpacing men in college and graduate school, but the "academic gains have not yet translated into significantly higher numbers of women in top jobs." Sandberg recognizes that women's progress is hindered by overt discrimination—unequal pay and inadequate parental leave, for starters. But the focus of her book is on the ways women hold themselves back, "by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be" — here's the conceit of the title — "leaning in." Far from denying that structural barriers exist, as some have claimed, she makes clear that she has "written this book to encourage women to...forge a path through the obstacles."

To that end, Lean In reads like a pep talk from someone who's been in a male-dominated game (Sandberg points out that she has never reported to a woman) long enough to have seen women sabotage themselves in all kinds of ways, from scaling back at work in the mere anticipation of having children to downplaying accomplishments because they worry that their ambition will come off as unseemly. Indeed, Sandberg herself cops to having made every mistake she writes about. A chapter with pragmatic advice for women on salary negotiation includes a revealing admission that she was reluctant to negotiate with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg after his initial salary offer, which she found fair. It was only after her brother-in-law yelled, "Damn it, Sheryl! Why are you going to make less than any man would make to do the same job?" that she steeled herself and went back to Zuckerberg to demand an even better deal. "My brother-in-law didn't know the details of my deal," she writes. "His point was simply that no man at my level would consider taking the first offer." Here, as she does throughout the book, Sandberg supports her point with ample social science research, in this case citing studies demonstrating that women, much more than men, fear that negotiating for higher salaries will decrease their likability.

As with the salary-negotiation episode, Sandberg's forthright descriptions of her own experiences lend weight to the book. In some cases her candor is startling. "I worry constantly that my children are worse off because I'm not with them full-time," she admits, describing her young daughter clinging to her leg and begging her not to go on a business trip. Elsewhere she confesses to being intimidated by stay-at- home moms. The ideal she looks to is a world where men can more easily leave the workforce to care for children and more women have access to jobs like hers, which she considers rewarding enough to make the tradeoffs worthwhile.

Though she describes scenarios many women will relate to, Sandberg's advice is not one-size-fits-all, in part because of the unique culture of Silicon Valley and the privileged perch from which she's writing. She tells of a male intern advising Zuckerberg that he needed to improve his public speaking skills and being rewarded for his bluntness with a full-time job offer; it's not difficult to imagine such a risky display of chutzpah backfiring. She also recalls, as a new mother, locking her office door at Google and secretly pumping breast milk during conference calls; most women, of course, don't enjoy that level of privacy in their workplaces. And yes, her casual reference to flying on a corporate jet and the shout-outs to her buddies Gloria Steinem and Oprah in the acknowledgements highlight Sandberg's essential otherness. (When she mentions, gratefully, that she and her husband "can afford exceptional child care" and later refers to her "vast support system," my mind wandered from the book into a wistful daydream about what my life might be like with similar resources.)

But to demand that Sandberg's advice apply to all women, however, as some of her critics seem to, holds her to an impossible standard to which a man writing a similar book surely would not be subjected. Sandberg has spoken publicly on gender issues in the past, and in the book she anticipates the criticism that's already being heaped upon her. "My hope is that my message will be judged on its merits," she writes. To return to that salary negotiation with Mark Zuckerberg: some might wonder why they should care that the extremely wealthy Sheryl Sandberg managed to turn a good deal for herself at Facebook into an even better deal. But it's easy to picture women readers applying Sandberg's lesson to their own salary negotiations. Say what you like about the messenger — that's a message I wouldn't want to lose.

Barbara Spindel has covered books for Time Out New York, Newsweek.com, Details, andSpin. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies.

Reviewer: Barbara Spindel