Anyone who has donned a robe and a tasseled mortarboard and walked across a stage is familiar with the often yawn-inducing tradition of the commencement speech. With few exceptions, commencement speakers play it safe, offering vague platitudes but no real advice to graduates facing uncertain futures in an ever-changing world. Charles Wheelan (Naked Economics) aims to correct that fault with a succinct collection of practical advice you won't hear in most keynote addresses.
With optimism and humor, Wheelan offers advice that manages to remain both broad and clearly applicable. His 2011 Class Day speech at Dartmouth (his alma mater) forms the basis for 10½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said, including the irreverent assertion that time spent at parties was not time wasted and the suggestion that marrying someone smarter than you may lead to less stress and more success. Wheelan also asks graduates to consider their future impact on society by striving not to make the world a worse place and, should they become parents, not to participate in what he terms "the Little League arms race," in which parents vent their competitive urges through their children's extracurricular activities. He urges graduates to take some risks and remain alert to serendipity, sharing the story of the most memorable moment of his trip around the world, which occurred before he and his wife left the country.
New Yorker cartoonist Peter Steiner contributes 15 illustrations to this funny and insightful guidebook to life after academia, the perfect gift for any grad. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger, Infinite Reads