Get Along, Get It Done, Get Ahead

Preface

I grew up on the west side of Chicago in a tough neighborhood. How tough? I remember one morning on the way to school when I spotted a dead body in a parking lot—the victim of a gangland-style shooting—surrounded by police officers. I kept walking. Mom and Dad had warned me not to talk to strangers.

Now I live on a cattle ranch in Texas and teach at a university in a nearby small town. How I got here is another story, and maybe even another book. As you can imagine, life here is very different from Chicago. For one thing, people are friendlier. A woman in my fitness class once told our group that she’d lived all her life in Texas except for the three months when her husband’s employer had transferred the family to California. “I hated ...