Sam Polk's For the Love of Money

Money is the key to power. That’s why the wealthy have access to luxuries the rest of us can only dream of one day having.

While many of us are struggling just to make ends meet, we see the wealthy living their carefree luxurious lives and we can’t help but feel envious. Some of us aspire to become rich like them, thinking that money will be the solution to all our problems, bringing us a lifetime of happiness. Sam Polk was one of those people.

Growing up, Polk recalls how miserable his family was because of their financial struggles. His father — who was an aspiring screenwriter when Polk was a kid — would always talk about how hitting the jackpot would fix everything. Listening to the way his father talked about the good life, Polk knew that his ultimate lifelong dream was to become rich.

While money does solve most problems —  such as living costs and debts— it does not solve everything, and it certainly doesn’t buy happiness.                   

In his memoir, For the Love of Money, Polk tells readers how he made his way to Wall Street and became a millionaire, and how achieving his lifelong dream did not satisfy him in the way that he thought it would.

All his life Polk wanted to fit in, and that was also one of the many reasons he wanted to be rich. If he had money, he could fit in with the men on Wall Street he had admired and looked up to. His success would also bring his family closer together and gain his father’s respect — or so he thought.

Once on Wall Street, Polk began to realize that most of the men he looked up to had nothing else really going for them, but their wealth. All they did was work, go to dinners, and party. Although all of that was fun at first, Polk soon became unhappy with the lifestyle and realized that his life lacked purpose. Sure he had the power to do whatever he wanted, but his relationship with his father was still strained and his job served no real purpose.

Polk went into Wall Street thinking that he had accomplished something great. Initially he thought he was being paid to understand the world, but later, he came to see it as merely being paid to judge the world and make his bets. He loved the money, but not the lifestyle it had brought him, or how he earned it.

When Polk left Wall Street he was told by numerous colleagues and friends that he was making a mistake and that if he stayed he could be earning way more in just a few years; but Polk had had enough. If all he was doing was working toward a bigger check, then what kind of person was he? He already had enough money to do whatever he wanted to do. Now what he really needed was to give his life purpose.

A few years after leaving Wall Street Polk founded Groceryships, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles whose objective is to improve long-term health and wellness in low-income communities by creating a network of educational support groups and enhancing access to healthy, unprocessed foods.

What Polk’s story teaches us is that though money is important, money alone doesn’t make you a successful person. It’s what you do to earn that money and how you contribute to this world that makes you truly successful.  


For a copy of the book visit: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Money-Memoir-Sam-Polk-ebook/dp/B0176M3XK8

For more information on Sam Polk visit: http://sampolk.me 

Melinda Marshall and Tai Wingfield's Ambition in Black and White

Melinda Marshall and Tai Wingfield’s Ambition in Black and White, is a book that captures the reality of being a woman, and a person of color, trying to excel in America — a country that caters to wealthy white men.

Here in America, society defines people by their ethnicity and gender. For women seeking financial success, there is this constant need to prove themselves to the males around them. Meanwhile, people of color are forced to confront various forms of racial discrimination; whether it be verbal, physical or being denied opportunities that come more easily to white people.

Though the book sets out to address the problems dealt by women, it tackles issues of race when recognizing the hardships of black women. In fact, the primary issue this book tackles is how being a woman of color is perhaps the most difficult thing to deal with in America.

When you think about it, it’s a double-edged sword really. While a black man may be looked down upon for being black, he still has the advantage of being male. And while a white woman is looked down upon for being female, at least her skin color is admirable in America. Black women have both, their gender and race working against them.

This is not to say that the struggles faced by men of color or white women are not real. They are very real. It just so happens that women of color face more obstacles.

While there has been an increase in women holding some of the top positions in various career fields, very few of those women are black, and this is perhaps one of the most crucial issues discussed in the book.

Bias plays a major part in the lack of black women with top paying careers. As the book states, “While multinationals proclaim and enforce rigorous anti-discrimination policies, bias persists at all levels, because rarely is it ever overt enough to be deemed outright discrimination.” (pgs. 23-4)

The bias of an employer is one of the major conflicts both, white women and black women, have to put up with, especially since most employers are white men. Oftentimes women, black women in particular, feel as if they are not receiving the credit they deserve. In a survey conducted by Marshall and Wingfield, more black women felt as if they were stalled in their careers than white women (44 percent vs. 30 percent).

By addressing these issues, this book calls on all women to recognize how they are at a disadvantage. Although things have gotten better for women, better isn’t good enough.

We need to educate ourselves on the various ways bias continues to persist in society. It is not until after you have educated yourself on these issues that you will be able to join the fight for equality. Reading Ambition in Black and White is a great first step toward joining the battle, since it explores the issues of today.

To read Ambition in Black and White you can purchase a copy from the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/Ambition-Black-White-Narrative-Innovation/dp/1942600798

Cliff Simon's Paris Nights

Cliff Simon’s memoir Paris Nights, tells the story of the beginnings of Simon’s journey toward stardom. His big stepping stone and the basis of this book, is his year in Paris as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge.

The book starts off with Simon receiving a call from his friend Gavin about the Moulin Rouge needing a new dancer. Gavin asks Simon if he would like to fill the position, and at the drop of a hat, Simon sells his car for a one way ticket to Paris — a bold move to make, and just one of the many risks you’ll see Simon take throughout the book.

Simon arrives in Paris looking forward to his new job only to find out he still has to audition — something Gavin failed to mention — and if he doesn’t make it, well then he just gave up all he had in South Africa for nothing.

Obviously Simon makes the cut, but before we get to the part in the story where he auditions, the book takes us back to Simon’s childhood.

Simon grew up in a whites only neighborhood in South Africa during the apartheid — a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party, the governing party from 1948 through 1994. Eventually as the war between the National Party and the African National Congress (ANC) intensified, his family decided to move to London while Simon was in highschool.

In London, Simon focused a majority of his time training to become an Olympic swimmer, with the goal of making it to the 1984 Olympics. Although he says he could’ve easily made it to the Olympics, something was telling him he needed to go back to South Africa, even if that meant being drafted into their military.

And so Simon joined the military, which although hellish, he found that it was what he needed to put him in his place after living such a privileged life. It not only gave him a newfound perspective of what it meant to truly struggle, it also gave him the strength that would help him kick off his dancing career.

Flash forward to the audition and we begin our journey alongside Simon in his year at the Moulin Rouge, a journey that widened Simon’s outlook of the world as he is exposed to things he never really encountered in South Africa: homosexuality, interracial couples, mobsters and freedom.

The book is not only a good read for dancers and actors, but also for those interested in historical and cultural perspectives, seeing as the most interesting part of this book is his transition from a narrow-minded South Africa to a very liberal France, which opened many doors for him. Although the title may suggest that this is solely based on his career at Moulin Rouge, there is much more the book explores that makes it a highly suggestable read.

To purchase a copy of Paris Nights click on the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Nights-Year-Moulin-Rouge-ebook/dp/B01ESBCHWA?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

Burt Weissbourd's Minos

Minos is the final piece of Burt Weissbourd’s Corey Logan Trilogy. The trilogy revolves around a no-nonsense female character, Corey Logan, who was once imprisoned for a crime she did not commit and later, she is working to help street kids get their lives back on track.

While the two previous books explore the world of mafias, con artists, runaways and life on the streets; Minos takes a sharp turn as it explores the ideas and beliefs found in the neo-pagan faith, Hellenism.

Hellenism is a religious movement whose followers set out to revive or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices. The central character of Minos is a teenage girl named Sara, who has begun performing ancient Greek rituals with hopes of summoning the Greek god Theseus, a legendary hero of Athens. Sara senses an imminent danger, and for reasons she cannot explain — at least not in a language that others can comprehend — she needs Theseus to stop a beast that is about to embark on a murderous rampage.  

The novel begins with Sara accidentally starting a fire at school while performing a ritual in the bathroom. She is immediately suspended until further notice and sent to receive professional help. Lucky for Sara, Dr. Abe Stein — who is a prominent character in the previous books — doesn’t write her off as crazy and prescribe her a bunch of meds. Instead, Dr. Stein makes an effort to try and enter into her world and make sense of it.

Here, in the United States, the word “pagan” has a negative connotation. People often connect paganism with dark magic, satanists and sinners. Therefore, when Hellenism came to the United State during the 1990s, it was not taken kindly to. As we see with Sara’s character, they — who believe in a religion that is not one of the “main world” religions — are not taken seriously and are oftentimes discriminated against.

Sara’s belief in Greek gods has her living as an outcast, and as she tries to desperately warn others that there is an impending danger, she is not taken seriously by anyone but Abe. It isn’t until some of her predictions begin to come true that others start to get on board.

While the novel serves to account for pagan faiths, it also tackles the problem of when a person’s belief consumes them. Although Sarah may seem a bit intense, this is not referring to her. Yes, she refers to her friends using Greek god names, but to her, her friends are just the modern-day versions of the gods. The murderer, on the other hand, seems to truly believe that he is a reincarnation of Minos — hence the name of the novel — and like Minos, he must sacrifice young lives to please the Cretan Bull, his master.

With Sara’s character and the murderer, the novel does a great job depicting how religion can create conflict. That is not to say that it sets out to antagonize religion. What this novel does is it shows readers how people can be misunderstood because of their faith, and how someone who is psychologically unstable can use their beliefs to justify their actions, thus creating more stigma towards their claimed religion. The way in which the novel weaves together Greek mythology with the present day — tackling ideas we don’t usually think about — makes it a unique and interesting read.

To read Minos you may purchase it from the link below: http://www.amazon.com/Minos-Corey-Thriller-Burt-Weissbourd/dp/1942600402