GRIT: The word has mouth feel. It sounds like something John Wayne would chaw on. Who wouldn't want grit? Wusses. Forget 'em. Angela Duckworth, the psychologist who has made "grit" the reigning buzz-word in education-policy circles, would surely recoil at any association between it and Wayne's outmoded machismo. Duckworth is a scholar you have to take seriously. She has been featured in two best-selling books ("How Children Succeed," by Paul Tough, and "The Power of Habit," by Charles Duhigg), consulted by the White House and awarded the MacArthur "genius" fellowship for her work on this obviously desirable trait. At the University of Pennsylvania's Duckworth Lab, grit is gender-neutral. It's self-control and stick-to-it-iveness. The two big ideas about grit that have made Duckworth famous are first, that it predicts success more reliably than talent or I.Q.; and second, that anyone, man or woman, adult or child, can learn to be gritty. Nonetheless, the word has a cowboy kick, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It harks back to America's pioneering days. It took grit to light out for the territory, as Huck Finn might have said. The notion that talent is born, not made, is the modern-day version of the caste system those Americans were fleeing. The cult of genius reinforces passivity and dampens ambition. "If we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking," Nietzsche wrote in a passage quoted by Duckworth in her new book, "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance." Grit, on the other hand, is egalitarian, or at least a less class-based indicator of future accomplishment than aptitude. Measurable intelligence owes something to genetic endowment but also depends heavily on environmental inputs, such as the number of words spoken to a child by her caregivers. The development of grit does not rely quite so much on culturally specific prompts. Moreover, grit appears to be a better engine of social mobility. Giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America's increasingly Dickensian inequalities, of course, but Duckworth's ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better. Duckworth has worked closely with influential figures in the education-reform movement, like the founders of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network, which now has 183 schools in 20 states. She helped them devise the tough-love or "no excuses" pedagogical approach increasingly common among charter schools, which holds students to high standards and employs stern disciplinary methods meant to cultivate good habits. Thanks to her, social and emotional education appears on public school lesson plans throughout the country. There's even a movement to test schools on how well they teach these noncognitive skills, as they're called, although it must be said that Duckworth strongly opposes this. She argues that any test of character worth giving is too subjective to standardize, and too easy to game. In this book, Duckworth, whose TED talk has been viewed more than eight million times, brings her lessons to the reading public. My guess is you'll find "Grit" in the business section of your local bookstore. As marketing strategies go, it's not a bad one, although the conventions of the self-help genre do require Duckworth to boil down her provocative and original hypotheses to some rather trite-sounding formulas. If this book were a Power Point presentation, as it surely has been, the best slide would be the two equations that offer a simple proof for why grit trumps talent: Talent x effort = skill. Skill x effort = achievement. In other words, "Effort counts twice." My grandfather, an immigrant, knew this. He would have called grit Sitzfleisch. (Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling "Outliers," called it the "10,000-hour rule.") Moreover, you don't just need Sitzfleisch. You need focused Sitzfleisch. Thirteen-year-old Kerry Close logged more than 3,000 hours of practice to become the National Spelling Bee champion, but that wasn't the reason she won. Close's competitive edge came from her fearless approach to practicing. At her tender age, she had the guts to identify and fix her mistakes, over and over again. I'm a person who takes to her bed when forced to confront her own failures, so I was daunted by Close and the other indefatigable people - "grit paragons" - profiled by Duckworth: West Point cadets who endure a grueling rite of initiation; a woman who overcame cerebral palsy to become one of the most successful comics in Britain. I got the lowest possible score on Duckworth's Grit Scale, and dropped right onto my fainting couch. But there is hope for me yet. Duckworth offers what amounts to a four-step program, the last step of which is to overcome pessimism by cultivating what her fellow psychologist Carol Dweck calls a "growth mind-set." I just have to complete Steps 1 through 3 first: (1) identify a burning interest; (2) practice it a lot; and (3) develop a sense of higher purpose, by which Duckworth means I must believe that my passion will improve the world. Step 3 strikes me as the least plausible of the four, even though Duckworth offers evidence that people who think their pursuits contribute to the well-being of others are more likely to meet their "top-level goals." Success is heartwarming, but does not always make the world a better place. One paragon of "purpose-driven grit" is Kat Cole, the child of a cash-strapped single mother, who rose from a waitressing gig at Hooters to become president of the Cinnabon bakery chain. Cole's Horatio Algeresque tale may inspire readers, but her philosophy of giving back will not awaken anybody's altruistic instincts. "If I could help companies, I could help brands," she asserts. "If I could help brands, I could help communities and countries." This is corporate sloganeering, not an ethical stance. At 880 calories and 36 grams of fat apiece, Cinnabon buns help no one. The feebleness of this example exposes a flaw in this book and, to a lesser degree, in Duckworth's doctrine: A focus on grit decouples character education from moral development. Duckworth never questions the values of a society geared toward winning, nor does she address the systemic barriers to success. She is aware of the problem, and includes the necessary to-be-sure paragraph. "Opportunities - for example, having a great coach or teacher - matter tremendously," she writes. "My theory doesn't address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It's about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn't all that matters, it's incomplete." She concludes with a section praising the writer and MacArthur fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates for being "especially gritty," though I wonder how Coates, who has written extensively about structural racism in America, might feel about being used to exemplify her up-by-the-bootstraps ethos. YOU CAN'T BLAME Duckworth for how people apply her ideas, but she's not shy about reducing them to nostrums that may trickle down in problematic ways. On the one hand, some of the "no excuses" charter schools that her research helped to shape have raised math and literacy scores among minority and poor students. On the other hand, a growing number of scholars as well as former teachers at those schools report that some of the schools, at least, feel more like prisons than houses of learning. Schools that prize self-regulation over self-expression may lift a number of children out of poverty, but may also train them to act constrained and overly deferential - "worker-learners," as the ethnographer Joanne W. Golann calls them. Meanwhile, schools for more affluent children encourage intellectual curiosity, independent reasoning and creativity. Ask yourself which institutions are more likely to turn out leaders. Perhaps an approach to character training that's less hard-edge - dare I say, less John Wayneish? - and more willing to cast a critical eye on the peculiarly American cult of individual ascendancy could instill grit while challenging social inequality, rather than inadvertently reproducing it. JUDITH SHULEVITZ, a contributing opinion writer at The Times, is the author of "The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time."

What makes high achievers successful, MacArthur Fellow Duckworth writes, is grit-a "combination of passion and perseverance"-coupled to their raw talent. Talent is important, she acknowledges, but talent multiplied by grit is what builds skill, and skill multiplied by grit equals achievement. Duckworth believes that talent or genius is innate, but "grit grows." In three sections, she defines grit, then shows how it can develop "from the outside in" and "from the inside out." She mixes descriptions of her own experience with notable success stories, such as that of quarterback Steve Young, and discoveries in psychology, creating a highly readable guide to achievement. "This book has been my way of taking you out for a coffee and telling you what I know," Duckworth concludes. She includes a self-assessment quiz, advice from Warren Buffet on identifying personal goals, and a chapter devoted to the ideal parenting style-a combination of supportive and demanding-for those who want to encourage the development of grit in their children. This is an informative and inspiring contribution to the literature of success. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Gumption: it's not just for readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as this debut book, blending anecdote and science, statistic and yarn, capably illustrates. If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? It could be, to trust MacArthur fellow Duckworth, that you're just not working hard enoughwhich is to say, you just don't have enough grit. That old-fashioned term, appropriated by a newfangled scholar, is meant to combine the notions of passion, persistence, and hard work in more or less equal measure. That passion, Duckworth argues, "begins with intrinsically enjoying what you do." Self-confidence figures into the equation, the assuredness that you have the ability to do what you do with at least some measure of success; but then, the ability to cope with failure, dust yourself off, and try again comes into play as well. Duckworth makes great effort to downplay any idea of innate talent in favor of improvement and mastery that come from digging in and doing it. "If we overemphasize talent," she urges, "we underemphasize everything else." In the nature vs. nurture controversy, the author sides with nurture, and there's more than a little of the tiger mom in the prescriptions she dispenses for education. But on that note, she writes, teachers who are demanding may "produce measurable year-to-year gains in the academic skills of their students." But throw a little love, supportiveness, and respect into the mix, and you build better people. For Duckworth, there should be no trophies for just showing up. When she writes of hard work in building the "gritty person," she means hard work, as evidenced by her close study of West Pointers during their first and worst year, when 20 percent of the students drop out in a cohort carefully selected for their ability to stay on task until the task is done. Not your grandpa's self-help book, but Duckworth's text is oddly encouraging, exhorting us to do better by trying harder, and a pleasure to read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Duckworth (psychology, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Key to Success) grew up hearing, "You know, you're no genius!" from her own father; she didn't even qualify for the gifted and talented program in third grade. In 2013, the MacArthur Foundation overturned her father's judgment, awarding her one of the fellowships commonly known as "genius grants" for proving that passion and perseverance-the stuff of grit-is more important than innate talent, more effective than so-called genius. Duckworth's latest combines decades of research with personal narrative, everyday and famous examples, accessible research in layperson's language, and solid narrative skill to enlighten, teach, inspire, and champion the efficacy of grit to improve just about every facet of listeners' lives. Get to know why "effort counts twice," deliberate practice and achieving more flow are essential, finding purpose is more than just a job, and more. That Duckworth herself narrates underscores her commitment, her insight, her grit. VERDICT An ideal acquisition for all libraries working to engage patrons.-Terry Hong, Smithsonian -BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Psychology professor Duckworth's previous work with the competitive global management firm, McKinsey & Company, and a prestigious MacArthur fellowship attest to her own grittiness as she presents a solid foundation for an engaging investigation into grit that is, how the combination of determination and desire affects chances of reaching a chosen goal. With research on activities ranging from sports to spelling bees and contestants from children to adults, Duckworth presents data, charts, and notes connected to real people who showed exceptional achievement in various areas as she assesses proof of a person's grit factor in predicting success. Discussions about the daily commitment required to sustain high degrees of excellence and the consistency of key insights across disciplines further illustrate the author's conclusions. Unlike innate talent, grit is a quality that can be increased by individuals and also encouraged to grow in others. With strong appeal for readers of Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Cain, this is a must-have.--Hayman, Stacey Copyright 2016 Booklist