This brilliant book encapsulates everything noble and true about stick-a-bility. You will learn how to devise strategies to help students learn how to work hard and adapt in the face of temptation, distraction, and defeat. A person is effective to the degree that they are able to concentrate. This book is mandatory reading for ALL students, freshmen and graduates. But sadly it will be lost on the very students that would benefit from Angela Lee Duckworth's genius, because they would have had to develop these strategies to read through the whole book. And todays youth lamentably are not serious prodigiously, voracious readers at all. They are glued to their mobiles and iPhones and assiduously only concentrate on trite and cursory reading . This book is about the power of Grit to help you achieve your potential. What we accomplish in the marathon of life depends on our grit--our passion and persistence for long-term goals. An obsession with talent distracts us from that simple truth.My favourite quote in the whole book is:"You can grow your grit from the inside out. You can cultivate your interests. You can develop a habit of daily challenge--exceeding-skill pra ctice. You can connect your work to a purpose beyond yourself. And you can learn to hope when all seems lost. Parents, teachers, bosses, mentors, friends----developing your personal grit depends on other people."
There is even a Grit questionnaire-to assess how gritty you are. I scored 99%.
Grit is a best seller. Dr Duckworth has a PhD, she's a MacArthur Fellow---a certified 'genius'. How do I even dare measure up to her gigantic intellect, with an attempt at critiquing her phenomenal brain power?
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the support and encouragement I have had in reading this coruscating book,And it is a measure of my gratitude and great pleasure that I submit my honest and unbiased review.

Grit was something that I studied about in my Human Relations class, where we were required to take a grit test. At the time I did not fully understand the concept, but I was finally able to go back and read more about Grit. The concept is simple, work hard, discipline and you may achieve more than a person with a talent can. Grit the book goes through the research and examples of how people actually waster their talents by not working hard and simply relying on the small base that they already had. I found this book amazingly inspiring and would swear by it and suggest it to others, until I am blue in the face.

I found this book very inspiring and it will stay with me for a long time. In fact I may well read it a second time once I've had time to absorb the contents and think it through some more.

It's well written with a good balance of scientific evidence and personal anecdotes. I found the author's assertion that our grit level changes in life normally and can also change intentionally if an individual would like to be 'grittier'. As she says 'who wants to be less gritty'? It has left me feeling more determined to pursue some things I've always intended and wanted to do but haven't achieved despite approaching retirement age. Learn to play the piano....write a novel...

The book has also left me with many questions I'd like to ask the author.

According to psychologist and author Angela Duckworth, “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another”. In her book “Grit”, she says that talent is not the sole determinant of a person’s ability to succeed at an endeavor. A particularly important trait is their “grit”, which is a combination of perseverance and tenacity at a specific goal or achievement, over time. The level of grit of a person helps them make the most of their innate talent and can be a strong determinant of whether they accomplish goals such as finish high school or college, get through grueling military training, or become successful at their chosen career even in the face of obstacles.
 
The book can be a bit academic and there is a lot of information which might get overwhelming at times, but the overall message is a really important one for students, parents, teachers and anyone who is interested in human potential. Grit can help you succeed whether you are aiming to be a successful student, employee or Olympic athlete. While I disagree with the basic premise that if you happen to have multiple passions, or lose interest and move on to new areas of focus, that you lack the grittiness to succeed, I do like the concept that your success at a goal depends to a large degree on something entirely within your control – the ability to persevere in the face of obstacles and setbacks. It is a book packed with suggestions and advice for becoming grittier oneself and helping others to acquire grit. Definitely a book you will want to read more than once!

An enlightening read about what it takes to succeed in the long term and how to encourage grit in the young. However, being in the later years of my working life, it was an uncomfortable read at times, realizing that perhaps I didn't have a huge amount of grit. I felt this book was more for the general reader so not so useful in the education establishment.

A rather repetitive read which I felt was a bit too self congratulatory of the author.

An excellent book which illustrates a fundamental psychological construct with personal anecdote and peer reviewed scientific research. Grit, as a factor which combines passion and perseverance, predicts who will survive the intense training regime at West Point, who will reach the highest levels of spelling bees, and (in others work) grit predicts drop out in training programmes for surgeons. Those who are less talented but show grit succeed where those who rely on 'being a natural' at something don't.
The book is written by the top researcher in the field in a warm and engaging style, with balanced use of personal stories and illustrations and pure science, it will be accessible to those new to the field of positive psychology and has significant lessons to teach about encouraging and developing grit in ourselves and in our families and communities.
This is an important book for all of us.

Loved this book!! Highly recommend it. Very well written,

Nothing particularly new in this book which was a little disappointing. Essentially, find what you love and persevere at it which I already knew. Having said that it would be a good read for someone who hadn't thought about what they want to do with their life.

Quite a lot of repetition here and not as much Grit as I imagined there would be. It was a little hard to keep this on going. An easy self help read. Thanks to netgalley for my early copy.

I was really interested to read this book as working in a high pressured, target-lead role I am always curious to see what makes those who are more successful shine compared to others?

Grit, according to Duckworth, is the thing that keeps you going and outperforms talent to get you where you want to go. I read this book in bite-size chunks, that is to say, I dipped in and out of it, rather than reading all the way through. I found I was able to do this without losing where I was up to or what it was all about.

Using historical and current events, the author (who is a Psychologist) delivers her points and theories well and not only that but makes you think that you can do more, be more. It's an interesting read, particularly if you are interested in psychology or self-awareness and improvement. Some reviews have stated that it was quite padded out and I tend to agree, but what I did like is the fact that this is accessible to the non-academic in this area. It's never dry or wordy.

A good book. Recommended.

What a fascinating book! I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this research on how important effort and perseverance is in being successful. Duckworth calls this grit, and has tests for measuring how gritty a person is in his or her projects

Although I very much enjoyed this book I had hoped that it might offer more information on how to actually cultivate Grit. Since re-reading the book description it has become clear that this book is not a self-help one and is more a psychological journal. Although this is probably just me missing the point, I feel the cover perhaps reflects the book as being in the self-help genre, which is perhaps a tad misleading. Despite this, the book is engaging and interesting and explores a relatively new area. The anecdotes are interesting the majority of the time, but I feel that the book could have been a lot shorter (it felt a bit padded out at times). Thanks for the opportunity to read, I learnt a lot!

<u>I got this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.</u>

After watching Angela Duckworth's TED talk, I was definitely intrigued by the concept of grit. The book, however, didn't explain the concept as I expected.
It is mostly a summing-up of the different kinds of research she has done in different locations, findings of other researchers etc.
While that premise may be attractive to other readers, I really prefer nonfiction books that are either more of a story or give me more direct insights in how to deal with certain topics.
This felt like it didn't do either and therefore just started to feel repetitive after a few chapters.

Definitely recommended for people who want more on the research about grit, but for those who are more or less expecting a hands-on treatment of the topic; maybe just watch the talk instead.