Pursuit of happiness genius movie#

The author vividly delineates it in this book. Milwaukee native Chris Gardner had to face some of the most formidable hurdles in life to become a successful person.

Pursuit of happiness genius movie#

(Throwback Review) There are only very few instances where the movie is as good as the book. Mythic, triumphant, and unstintingly honest, The Pursuit of Happyness conjures heroes like Horatio Alger and Antwone Fisher, and appeals to the very essence of the American Dream.more

More than a memoir of Gardner's financial success, this is the story of a man who breaks his own family's cycle of men abandoning their children. Never giving in to despair, Gardner made an astonishing transformation from being part of the city's invisible poor to being a powerful player in its financial district. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving among shelters, 'HO-tels,' soup lines, and even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm than Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him as part of the city's working homeless and with a toddler son. Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall StreetĪt the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. The book has some good storytelling, but treads too softly to satisfy serious inquirers about Jefferson's phrase.The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. The result is a dull centrism that winds up as an apology for the present war in Iraq. Like a civic booster talking up his town, Cannon never subjects official pronouncements about 'freedom' and 'pursuit of happiness' to critical scrutiny. But numerous digressions blur the book's focus, and the author takes a generally shallow approach. Cannon's vision is cheery, his style friendly and informative. Roosevelt American generosity and the current U.S. He sets forth this thesis with long quotations from American presidents and investigations of such topics as Jefferson the Civil War Franklin D. Beginning with the observation that Americans after 9/11 and during World War II showed their stuff as patriots by doing things like attending baseball games and eating pie, he proposes that the pursuit of happiness is 'the best working definition of freedom that has ever been devised.' Much of American history, Cannon argues, is best seen as a fight to allow more people at home and abroad to enjoy the right to chase personal dreams. What did Thomas Jefferson mean in the Declaration of Independence when he listed 'the Pursuit of Happiness' among the 'unalienable rights' of all men, and what has the phrase meant to Americans since? Veteran journalist Cannon (Boy Genius) explores the term's origins and uses, particularly in times of war. This optimistic, meandering look at the peculiarly American phrase 'pursuit of happiness' is strong on research but weak on analysis.