This book is about the extreme parenting style of Amy Chua in raising her daughter to musical stardom.

– Extreme parenting: the dilemma of “Chinese parenting” (parents’ choices) vs. “Western parenting” (children’s choices) in a western world.
– Some of her practices are extreme: daily music practices during vacation, lead by examples (giving practice instructions, doing the homework of finding the right teacher).
– Never give up on your kids; you know better than your kids and the kids may hate you now but appreciate you better in the future.
– Western culture favors more socialization and fun over technical drills and pushing oneself for success.
– Building a strong foundation for the kids and let go. Discipline builds confidence, which breeds success and so on.
– If you know in your heart your kids are diamonds in the rough, wouldn’t you want to polish it? It’s NOT so easy to let go for Chinese parents.
– Funny. Not as hard charging and abusive as the media portrayed it. It’s much harder to force someone to do something they don’t want to do. If it’s not out of love, you wouldn’t do it. The intentions are always good and out of the heart. But I wouldn’t surprised that there’s something to be gained in glowing over and being proud of your children’s achievement.
– I’m curious how her two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, will turn out. They seem to be thriving. Curious if they will do the same to their own children: 2nd and 3rd generation children get soft.
– Admire Amy Chua’s honesty of self-parody and her drive to instill the discipline in her kids, which Western parenting lacks. Not sure about how much of that can stymie or contribute to the creativity of the children, which the society values more.
– Katrin’s (Amy’s younger sister) undergoing bone marrow transplant (many dosages of chemotherapy) and surviving the Leukemia may have changed her perspective about raising her own daughter for happiness.
– Comparing two dogs to her two daughters, dogs just need a little love and attention and don’t require pushing due to limited potential. But children, that’s a different story.
– Personally, I don’t have a Tiger Mom and my parents were not tiger parents. I’m self driven but how would I turn out if I had a Tiger mom? I guess I’ll never know.

Really enjoyed the book. If you’re interested in how the Chinese parents raise the kids, this book might offer a glimpse of it but use it as a reference as not all Chinese parents are like that. At least not mine.

Here are some good youtube videos on this book:
Amy Chua: Tale of a Tiger Mother (1/12/12)
Today Show
Child of Tiger Mom Speaks Out
Emily Luk: A Tiger Daughter Weighs In

I didn’t know Robin Robert before the book since I don’t watch TV, especially the morning TV like Good Morning America. Who has time to watch TV in the morning while rushing to go to work? But it may be just me.

The book describes Robin’s going through her bone marrow transplant after acquiring the MDS (Myelodysplastic syndromes), possibly caused by the heavy chemo therapy from her breast cancer a few years before. The book went through great details of the process: finding the donor (her sister), pre-treatment to kill of all the damaged blood cells, the gradually inject the new stem cells from the donated bone marrow to propagate the healthy cells. After the heavy duty treatment (> 100 days), she finally came through in one piece.

My takeaways:
1. Learned a few things about the job the anchor person in the early morning show. Waking up 3:45am in the morning and did lots of things before any one is awake, especially the crews working overnight to prepare for the show.
2. “There should be no limit to gratitude,” her mama sets an example for treating people with utmost kindness.
3. Strong family tie between Robbin and her family, especially her mother and her sisters. This sets a person up like Robbin for success.
4. Robin seems to have fun at Good Morning America. She’s surrounded by nice and genuine co-workers.
5. Bone marrow transplant story: the pre-treatment to kill off all the old cells and transplant the stem cells to rebuild it like an infant.
6. The book’s capturing the voice of the caretakers – her partner, Amber is quite a treat for the reader to learn from their perspective.
7. Coming back from edge of death, twice, and in public eyes can really change a person’s perspective in life. Being thankful is the least one can do.
8. Great voice in the audiobook. Not like reading a book but telling a story, an emotional story.

This is an inspirational book for anyone who’s going through a serious illness or taking care of one. I recommend the book.

What a journey for Elizabeth Warren, from being a blue-collar worker’s daughter in Oklahoma, to a school teacher, to becoming a Harvard Law Professor and then to becoming a US Senate from Massachusetts.

I listened to the audiobook and utterly enjoy the story-telling of her own story. It’s fascinating to see a woman achieved such a success having been encouraged by her own mother to be just a housewife. Born to a financially-strapped family with a healthy-failing breadwinner father, she saw first hand what it’s like to go from the middle-class to the poor. Elizabeth was driven to succeed despite getting married at 19 years old and managed to get her law degrees while raising two young children. I’m not surprised that her first marriage failed as she turned out be a woman Jim Warren expected her to be. But she did marry her true love, another professor named Bruce Mann because of his “great legs.”

Professors don’t always have the cushy job starting off. There were lots of moving between her and Bruce. There were lots of accommodating and testing of their love for each other, especially with her 2 young children and her parents plus Aunt Bee sticking around to take care of the kids.

Teaching a law class without text takes lots of guts, especially something like bankruptcy law that were just revised after the Great Depression at that time. But that planted the seed for her continued effort to fight for the middle class and the lower echelon of the society. She started out wanting to know who those people went broke but later found how ordinary those people are.

Elizabeth dug deeper into why the number of people filing bankruptcy are climbing so fast. Besides divorces, serious illnesses, unemployment, She found that most people fell into the traps set up by the banking industry: balloon payments, high mortgage rate, ratcheted up interest rate, and etc.

Making a difference could mean taking on more thankless jobs like what she started with the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, then COP (Congress Oversight Panel to oversee the bailout of 2008), and finally running for the senate race. It’s a long-odd fight and Elizabeth has what it takes – a simple focus to help turning the odd more in favor of the little guys, the underprivileged, and the future generation.

The American politics have been known to be heavily influenced by lobbyists, especially the Wall Street firms and banks. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to run for a political seat and who’s going to pay for that? None other than the big companies – not the little guys. “The System Is Rigged!” (See her speech here in Democrats National Convention.)

As a Republican, I cannot be helped to move to the center by Elizabeth Warren’s drive, passion and her arguments to turn the tide. Her data just confirmed my belief that the odd is stacked against the poor, who are trapped by the rich ( or laws enacted by lawmakers funded by the rich) to “slave” for the rich. It’s probably not healthy in the long run. It’s what triggered the revolution in the past. People revolt if they can’t take it any more.

Politics are inherently dirty but the partisanship was incredibly silly, like dividing the COP budget along the party line. To be an insiders, she was discouraged from criticizing other insiders or the insiders don’t listen to them. That’s a good advise in any kind of politics. Elizabeth gave birth to the CFPB and yet she’s not allowed to take official leadership role because her nomination won’t pass Congress due to her intimate involvement. Well, she turned around, ran for the senator and won! Irony in politics.

Her fight for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to be included in the reform bill after the financial crisis got the banking industry to spend over $1M/day to fight it, according to her. I like her story in convincing Barney Frank to include the protection bureau in the bill – her Grandma knew two good things about FDR during the Great Depression: he made it safe to put money in the bank and “other good things.” Create something that people can understand and they’ll stand behind it. Good advise.

There are lots of tedious description of her running for the senate toward the last quarter of the book.

Overall, it’s an inspirational book. I highly recommend it.