How to Start

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A01=Jodi Kantor
Author_Jodi Kantor
career
Category=QDXB
Category=VS
eq_bestseller
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eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_self-help
future
Future unknown hope
graduation
Graduation career new jobs
happiness
hope optimism
Hustle culture fulfilment
Modern anxiety passive despair
new beginnings
new job
plan life goals achieve change
Practical life advice guidance
success
Success happiness optimism
The Obamas Pulitzer prize winner
unknown

Product details

  • ISBN 9781037208409
  • Weight: 192g
  • Dimensions: 136 x 184mm
  • Publication Date: 21 Apr 2026
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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'A model of real, grounded, hard-headed optimism in these days of crisis and anxiety – useful not only for new graduates but for all of us' Oliver Burkeman, bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks

Jodi Kantor’s ground-breaking reporting has toppled media magnates, sparked reform worldwide and foretold many of the unsettling changes we see in the workplace today. But before all of this, Kantor was kicked off her college newspaper. Society expects perfection, but Kantor knows those first professional steps are often rocky. She also knows that younger generations today are facing new and frightening terrain, with political upheaval, skyrocketing costs of living and the unknowns of AI.

Kantor casts aside platitudes and false hope to offer tangible help. Work is how we spend much of our time. It’s our engine of progress: how cancer therapies are invented, political campaigns won, thrilling art created and matched with an audience. Instead of letting cynicism take over, Kantor identifies two principles to help young people discover their life’s work: craft and need. By pairing the two, they can navigate tough, sensitive choices: how to think about money. How much risk to take on. When to buck what others are saying.

Powerful and provocative, How to Start is a statement of faith for young people to keep in their back pocket as they make their way through uncertain times, and offers wisdom, strategy and a set of aspirations to launch their careers and last their whole lives.

Jodi Kantor began her journalism career by dropping out of Harvard Law School to join Slate.com in 1998. Four years later, she became the Arts & Leisure editor of the New York Times. For six years, she wrote about former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Her book The Obamas chronicles their behind-the-scenes adjustment to the roles of president and first lady. Kantor’s reporting with Meghan Twohey on Harvey Weinstein won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She has recently turned her attention to the US Supreme Court and joined the Washington bureau's reporting team full-time. Kantor lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and two children.

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