Forecast: "The bestselling record of the Rimms' previous book, a 20-city radio tour, a 23-city author tour, and widespread interest in girls' development should guarantee this book broad exposure and a long life."
Publishers Weekly, December, 2000

"How Jane Won is a great book for our daughters¾It's a roadmap to living an extraordinary life."
Ann Curry, NBC Today Show

When I was 8, my grandmother sent me a biography of women’s lives. Clara Barton’s accomplishments as a nurse and humanitarian spoke to me, and her story lingered long after I had lost track of the book. Twelve years later, I became a registered nurse.

Books can influence young lives. In 1999, the best selling See Jane Win: The Rimm Report on How 1,000 Girls Became Successful Women by child psychologist Sylvia Rimm inspired mothers who were seeking advice on how to raise their daughters. Now its companion, How Jane won: 55 Successful Women Share How They Grew from Ordinary Girls to Extraordinary Women, aims to inspire those daughters.

More than a how-to book, How Jane Won shimmers with personal triumphs. Gathering a cultural and socio-economic mix of women ages 30-80, Rimm’s interviews capture the passion of these varied individuals and their perseverance against the roadblocks of poverty, physical, and emotional handicaps and self-doubt.

Mary Previte, New Jersey assemblywoman and administrator of Camden County Youth Center, was born the daughter of missionaries China. As a girl, she spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. Surviving that, Previte returned to American Where at age 14, she lost her left hand in a revolving saw accident. When her little brother voiced concern that his sister couldn’t ride her bike again, Previte’s father answered, “I don’t know why not.”

Positive statements like that pop up repeatedly in these stories, showing at least a single binding thread throughout the interviews. At some time in each of these women’s lives, someone cheers on their behalf. Someone tells them that they are worthwhile and deserving. “You can do it” may be the most important words they hear – a catalyst for choosing a positive path. Many have supportive parents, yet positive messages also can originate with teachers, nuns, bosses, friends, or lovers.

Rimm separates the women’ stories into several sections: lawmakers an adjudicators; shatterers of the glass ceilings; healers and discoverers: nurturers; artists and musicians, and communicators. From Eileen Collins, NASA astronaut and space shuttle commander to Tamara Minick-Scokalo, marketing director for Procter & Gamble to NBC News and Dateline anchor Jane Pauley, each woman divulges how she coped with life’s struggles and society’s expectations. Sandra Day O’Connor, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, discusses her shyness. She grew up on a remote cattle ranch in the Southwest where people had to fend for themselves. Despite being fiercely independent, shyness plagued her. A dramatic arts teacher gently demanded she “get up in front of people and say things.”

Like many of these women, today’s teens still with poverty, racism, peer pressure, raging hormones, and not fitting in. women’s issues in society, however, have changed and new obstacles have replaced old ones. Schools that provided safe and fertile ground for many of the 55 successful women Rimm reports on now practice “lock-down” drills preparing children to avoid shooters who may blast into classrooms.

What has not changed, however, is the need for role models. How Jane Won presents myriad choices,
allowing girls to identify with the lives of women astronauts, district attorneys, CEOs, civil engineers, professors, photographers, musicians, editors, authors, teachers, and nurses. Most important, the book offers words of encouragement.

That may be all a girl needs to give her a step up.

Theodora Aggeles
Saint Petersburg Times,
March 25, 2001.

Read more comments. . .

The readers who made a bestseller of See Jane Win and all girls and young women who value personal achievement will welcome this inspiring companion volume in which successful women speak about the turning points, crises, mentors, opportunities, failures, and blessed accidents they encountered on the road to fulfillment.

In How Jane Won, Dr. Sylvia Rimm lets more than fifty women tell the stories, in their own words, about how they got to where they are. Among the women are plenty of household names, including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Florence Henderson, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, space shuttle commander Eileen Collins, astronaut Cady Coleman, Harry Potter artist Mary GrandPré, and novelist Jacquelyn MItchard. But there are also women you've never heard of scientists, teachers, artists, and homemakers¾who are every bit as successful. To learn how these women earned, struggled, and lucked their way to the top is both fun and inspiring.

Significantly, success in How Jane Won is not narrowly defined. A sense of happiness and satisfaction is just as important as a six-figure paycheck or fancy title. Any doubt about this is dispelled by Lisa Taylor's account of why she loves being an elementary school teacher or Roberta Baldwin's sonnet to the virtues of volunteering.

Sometimes the first step to success is believing it's possible. How Jane Won erases all doubt.

Highlights of How Jane Won