The book “Now, Launch Your Career” is a compilation of letters to professionals from whom you might wish to get vocational advice, but probably never would.

In the book, editor Paul Carpino, M.A., a career counselor at UNLV, has compiled over 41 letters from highly successful professionals from various fields.

These letters contain responses to three very broad questions about the professionals’ occupations:

1) What do you like about your career?

2) What don’t you like about your career?

3) How did you choose or break into your career?

In his preface, Carpino says that the questions were intended to make the interviewees closely consider their chosen paths. This way, a reader might gain pointed and honest feedback about what will be involved in a given career.

This book has a solid conceptual base and is guided by the simplicity of the questions.

For the most part, this minimalism works. The letter writers seem open to share what they like and dislike about their fields. The questions aren’t quite pointed or personal enough to reap the maximum advice from each interviewee, but they still effectively get sincere answers.

A quick glance down the table of contents reveals a list of careers that seem, at first, rather haphazardously chosen. Careers as seemingly obscure as abbot, professional clown and marine geologist appear on the list.

While the careers seem arbitrary, the letters tend to address broader categories of vocation, such as ministry, live entertainment and field science. Skepticism at the list’s comprehensiveness will likely fade as a reader begins to peruse the letters and the informative author biographies.

At one point, Carpino answers these interview questions himself, in effect choosing himself as the top professional in the career counseling field. Perhaps there is some accuracy in that claim, but it seems rather gratuitous.

Otherwise, the professionals chosen for questioning seem to be informed members of their field, and are quite willing to deal advice.

Overall, the answers will be helpful to people with little direction in their career choice. Because of the honesty that comes through the answers, especially to question two, a reader could certainly find direction toward, or away from, particular fields.

Some of the letters fail to say anything informative, falling back on cliché phrases and generalizations. Most of the letters, though, have at least a few golden nuggets of advice.

In reality, this is a book of advice letters a person wishes they could get themselves. In effect, Carpino has put together a collection that provides advice directly from those most successful in their fields to anyone searching for the correct career path.

Ultimately, this book won’t cut it as a specific reference guide. However, if a student is looking for some inspiration as to how to choose a career, “Now” might be a good read.

Although the book may not be the best way to get advice about the ins and outs of specific fields, it’s worth a glance if you’re good at reading between the lines.

If not, the book’s lesson is this: Use what you know and whom you know to get where you want to go.

Oh, and you’re going to have to work for it.

–Sarah Dorn is an english junior.