Overview Almost Everything: Notes on Hope (2018) by bestselling author Anne Lamott is a collection of essays on finding glimmers of optimism even amid great turbulence. Just before her sixty-first birthday, Lamott wrote these essays to share the wisdom she has gleaned from her many decades of living with her grandson and niece. At turns witty, serious, and hopeful, Lamott weaves together anecdotes from her life with spiritual insights to impart uplifting messages. The year before the writing of the book was full of political and societal turmoil, but Lamott was also happier than she had ever been. She believes that there is important understanding to be gained from the paradox of her experience, as it echoes an even greater paradox: everything that exists as truth contains within some degree of contradiction. Even when the external world seems to be crumbling, with mass shootings, human rights violations, and general divisiveness, Lamott does her best to turn her attention to the gener...

Never forget the fundamentals –⁠ no matter what industry you’re in. The year was 1955, and the author, Alan Patricof, had just graduated college. In the sweltering July heat, he walked the streets of lower Manhattan searching for a job. He started at the bottom of the block, at 110 Wall Street. In every building he entered, he rode the elevator to the top and stopped in every office until he reached the bottom. It took him nearly three months until this resulted in something promising: a securities analyst trainee position at a firm that Alan had previously never heard of. That firm was Naess & Thomas, and it belonged to a famous Norwegian economist named Ragnar Naess. In Naess, Patricof had found a top-notch mentor, someone who could teach him the most essential part of any business career: the fundamentals. The fundamentals are going to be different depending on the particular type of business you’re in, but let’s take venture capital as an example. In the investing bus...