Expect to Win: Pearls of Wisdom for Getting to the Top

Despite stellar credentials and more than 20 years of Wall Street experience, Harris, managing director of Goldman Sachs, clumsily delivers hackneyed business guidance. Broken down into chapters detailing “Carla's Pearls” of career advice, the author reneges on her promise to provide practical, strategic tools or specific, play-by-play answers and strategies for business success, depending instead on such standard business-book fare as “Be yourself,” “Know your goals,” “Brand yourself” and “Find a mentor.” Harris's strength is in her supportive tone; she speaks forcefully about asking for what you want, developing a “winner's lens” (the ability to always see yourself as a winner and present yourself as such) and the titular expectation of success, all reasonable advice. But handicapped by halting, repetitive writing and the mobbed state of the business self-help shelves, groaning with similar books offering more substantive strategies than this one, this title will likely sink without a trace. (Jan.)