Climbing the Ladder in Stilettos provides a variety of instructional and inspirational material for women faced with the task of improving their lives and careers. In particular, it is aimed at those women who have not yet found their niche or who fear they are unappreciated as well as unfulfilled. Author Lynette Lewis aims to help those women to identify life goals and then provide them with methods of trying to bring those goals to fruition. This is an admirable ambition and it seems likely that she will be able to help many people in this way. She certainly seems to be enthusiastic and committed to her task and that is always a significant advantage.

This is a very American book – it is explicitly aimed at Americans, indeed and all of the examples and case studies are relentlessly aimed at American situations. That is not necessarily bad, of course but it does mean there are certain characteristics that would not automatically apply to other cultures. For example, Lewis fully bases her philosophy on the concept that people improve their lives by identifying goals about which they feel passionate and then work hard to achieve them. In other words, hard work and personal faith and other personality traits can lead to personal fulfillment. That is quite an uplifting philosophy but it is not one that would be held by women in many countries who face structural and cultural barriers to this form of self-actualisation. Further, it suggests that people can determine what it is they most want, articulate it and then endeavour to achieve it. Perhaps this is true for many people but not, surely, for everyone. Well, that is what marketing is for perhaps.

Judging business or self-help books should probably be best achieved by considering whether they help their intended audience to improve their lives in some meaningful way. Since I am not the appropriate audience for this book that is difficult for me to achieve. However, I can judge it by my willingness to recommend it to my female students and use it in teaching. In this case I can certainly say that I intend to use some of the lessons in the MBA classroom since gender issues here in Thailand are of genuine relevance and importance. I will try to do so judiciously because not everything would work, in my opinion but I will be adding the book to the library and encouraging others to read it (of course, they might prefer to buy a copy of their own).