Customer Reviews

All Things at Once

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Mika Brzezinski has promoted this book by saying that she has advice that she wants to give to younger women in the workplace. One piece of advice that Mika likes to trumpet is: "Don't forget to have children!"

Mika writes on pg. 4, "One of the first things I talk about, when I speak with young women about jump-starting their career - even if they don't ask [is] 'Don't forget to have children...'" Her publisher's blurb says, "she shares a refreshingly pragmatic approach for the professional woman: don't wait to have children..."

However, when Ms. Brzezinski gets pregnant in her 20's, as Ms. Brzezinski promotes and expounds, she is privileged enough, to be able to hire a slew of nannies and back-up, beginning when her children are babies. Mika speaks of her supportive husband, and she is able to employ a squadron of babysitters and housekeepers, but it seems Mika still can't manage and bemoans continually about how depleted she is. It turns out, that taking care of children can be quite exhausting. Who knew that children had so many needs? Another reminder: It is really essential to have a plenitude of hired hands to take care of your children! Don't forget the fleet of domestic help!

Even with assistance and support, Mika distracted, falls down her stairs while holding her second daughter. There is panic in the emergency room thinking the baby might even be paralyzed. Luckily that was not the case and the fracture to the little girl's femur bone is repaired. Still, this prompts Mika and her husband, to hire even more household help and caretakers, to make sure of always "having the kids 'staffed.'" (pg.112)

Ms. Brzezinski is able to employ an array of surrogate help (can't everyone do that) to handle all the 'things' in her life. "We set it up so the house could run efficiently in my absence - and even in my presence." (pg. 114) Even so, Mika laments repeatedly, about how drained and fatigued she is. Given that Ms. Brzezinski is dependent upon a plethora, of round-the-clock childcare and custodial stand-ins, it would seem that Mika's advice would be to think carefully and arduously, before taking on the demands of having a baby, or having another one; not to rush into it or take on the responsibility before one is ready. Mika's 'advice on motherhood' also seems a bit insulting, to all the working moms, working dads, stay-at-home moms and dads, and all those who raise children without a fraction of the help that Mika is fortunate enough to have.

Mika Brzezinski is on a morning show with a co-host, whose intelligence, even her own father calls, "stunningly superficial." If Mika's father feels this way about their program, others can't be blamed for thinking the exact, same thing.

It is deflating and demoralizing, that these 'stunningly substandard,' self-righteous, duplicitous, disingenuous, pompous co-blabberators, ended up bungling their way to having all this 'news' air time, when there is no doubt that Mika's and Joe Scarborough's main concerns, have always been their own artificial, egotistical, hypocritical, confusing, caterwauling histrionics.
Not surprisingly, Mika sounds the same way in her book.

Speaking of advice, whether you've remembered to have children or not, do yourself a favor, save your money, and instead of buying this book, spend it on a babysitter.

I read this book and thought Mika was wise to make marriage and childbearing a priority. But then it became the usual drivel. Mika may have borne two children, but she's been too busy with her ego and her career to rear them. She appears to have adjusted totally to this sad situation, as revealed by the family Christmas cards--one shows her daughter with a broken femur in a hospital bed, with a balloon caption claiming this is what happens when baby is naughty. Actually, it was Mom who was naughty--she didn't get enough sleep and tumbled down the stairs, managing to fall on her daughter twice. Then there's the one showing her husband, two daughters, and a stand-in woman, which asks the recipient to say hello to Mommy if you see her. The final example shows Mika, hubby, daughters, and a baby (not their own). Some people thought she'd had a third child, not realizing it was a "joke" card. Let's hope her daughters, when they grow up, have a good laugh on the way to their shrinks. This book provides a graphic illustration of how to have "All Things at Once" without really having the substance of any of them. How sad.

I got this from the library and finished it in less than three hours. Wow. Driven by what seems to be an obsessive need to be in the spotlight, Brzezinski neglects her children for a life that keeps her--rather than them--the center of attention. She freely admits that she finds true parenting to be a chore and would much rather be a "fun" parent. Being a parent means accepting that some days are nothing but temper fits and tears, whilst others are hugs and fun, and most are in the middle, with a little of both to keep things interesting. Brzezinski believes the proper way to raise her children is to take out loans and foist her daughters upon nannies and sitters so she herself has as little interaction with them as possible. At first I found this incredible; however, by the end of the book, it became quite clear that those kids may well be better off with people who actually want to be around them. If her horrific recounting of what happened when she believed her daughter to be paralyzed couldn't make her see the forest for the trees, well, perhaps it's best she sticks to her book tours and morning show and leaves her children in much more capable hands.

I enjoy reading about others lives, even when I know very little about them. That was the case when I decided to read Mika Brzezinski's, "All Things At Once." I became a little worried when the marketing of the book was focused on career women. I have the wrong plumbing and I am perfectly satisfied working with my wife in her in-home childcare business. With that said, I went into this book wanting to provide insight relevant to anyone interested in Mika's book.

"All Things at Once," by Mika Brzezinkski reads much like how she describes her career. It starts out with the intention of doing great things. The focus of the book is pretty rough with signs of promise. There are parts that are good and others that fall short. By the last third of the book, the memoir comes into its own. It pulled me in and began to tug on me in an emotional way.

The beginning of the book takes a glimpse at Mika's childhood. It is interspersed with mentions of her career. Mika's father was the national security adviser during the Carter administration. Her family in all aspects were country folk that enjoyed hunting and had a lifestyle far removed from the Washington socialite scene they had become apart of. The memoir glances over this information, which if given more detail would have been excellent reading.

Mika goes on to highlight the start of her career. She discusses her choices that created a hectic and stressful life. All this leads to an accident that made Mika take a closer look at her decisions. This becomes a vital turning point in her life. Mika's family dynamic is different from the typical two working parent household. The demands put on Mika and her husband, because of their careers, creates an environment that may shock some reading the book.

As Mika details her first move to MSNBC, the focus of the book becomes clearer and the story begins to hold my interest better. Her experiences in the latter part of her career are detailed in a way that was very interesting and moving.

As described in the book, Mika stretches herself quite thin. With this in mind she put together a good memoir. If Mika had more time to dedicate to her book, it could have been great. Overall, I enjoyed the honest and telling look into her life. I would recommend it to anyone, not just career minded women.

---
Meijer Bjorn, Reviewer for Bookpleasures

What a disappointment this book is! I get a real kick out of Morning Joe and thought I would really like Mika because of her very strong opinions and the way she keeps Joe, Willie, Barnacle and the rest of them in line. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Fueled by constant whining about how tired she was, the book is numbingly repetitive. To her credit, she's a very hard worker and seems to have married the world's most perfect man. I happen to agree with Mica that women should marry and have children while they're young. But Mica is living proof that you can't have "All Things at Once" and that she should have put her career into low gear while her kids were young. To call this book a "self help" book is a joke.

I read this book because I wanted to see what a co-anchor, on one of the three cable news stations had to say. The women and men who `host' these shows, funnel and filter the news for America, so their positions can have an undue influence on the American political pulse. I have seen Mika stridently, pompously, and repeatedly descend on anyone who dares consume sugar. Yet, Ms. Brzezinski, can just as easily $hill for $tarbuck'$ $weetened drink$. Mika said that Abraham Lincoln is her favorite of the Founding Fathers. Just a century off.

What advice could Ms. Brzezinski have about "mothering?" Mika, with frequent verve, repeatedly tells her women readers that they should have their children in their 20's, just as Mika did. On the other hand, Ms. Brzezinski employs an armada of nannies and babysitters, to outsource the care of her children, which she glosses over. What Mika is trying to package as parental advice, seems empty when she admits how little she sees her own children. This often makes Mika appear clueless, in a Marie-Antoinette sort of way. One is left baffled, from what Mika espouses, and then how she leads her own life.

In Mika's own words: "It meant we'd need virtually full-time babysitting help." (p 79) "I could have used much more help, but we could barely afford just the one sitter." (p 96) "He [her husband] took out loans to hire another nanny so I could get the rest I needed, and all the support we needed around the house. We hired a night person and a day person." (p 112) "We set it up so the house could run efficiently in my absence - and even in my presence." (p 114) "She [Mika's daughter] was about nine, and she was making an appointment on her cell phone because she didn't want to wait for Mommy to get around to scheduling a cleaning. And she had to tell me how to find the dentist's office, too, because I'd never been there before." (p 128) "I'd miss my daughters' birthdays from time to time, but then I'd make it up to them by throwing a party a couple of months later...As I write this, I'm missing Carlie's elementary school graduation, so there's a constant tug and pull between what I need to be doing at work and what I'd like to be doing at home." (p 180) "Once, Emilie was performing in a circus at school. She was in third grade, and was terrifically excited...All day long, I kept thinking about this damn circus." (p 181) "Unfortunately, the role of wife and mother didn't even come close to defining me, as my family quickly learned... I could use the washing machine without too much trouble, but once I took the clothes out of the dryer they were on their own." (p 191) "As soon as I had to be the taskmaster, the coordinator of all things domestic, it took some spirit out of it. It made it more like a job." (p 192)

Mika is always tired and finds the responsibilities of being a parent draining. All through the book, she complains about how tired she is: "tremendous exhaustion" (p 7) "constantly nauseous, nervous, exhausted, frayed, fried" (p 66) "I could even sneak in a nap" (p 75) "I was by now constantly and relentlessly tired" (p 78) "I was bone-tired" (p 90) "I couldn't sleep" (p 95) "a full night's sleep - a cherished luxury" (p 96) "instead of this overwhelmed, overextended" (pg 96) "a nap, I knew, like I should have been" (p 97) "get the rest I needed, and all the support we needed around the house" (p 112) "being so limited on my sleep" (p 113) "when you don't sleep all night, you can't think" (p 113) "sleepless night, and then another" (p 113) "Because I needed my sleep" (p 114) "I let our sitters stay with our children all day if I felt I needed to catch up on my sleep." (p 114) "haggard and worn..bone-tired" (p 117) "being able to sleep" (p 127) "much needed rest and pampering" (p 133) "I was so tired" (p 139) "beaten down" (p 144) "Once I cooked a Thanksgiving turkey with the plastic bag filled with gizards still inside. I was quite capable of managing our busy household, but when it came to actually rolling up my sleeves and doing the work, that was a different story." (p 191) "I needed my sleep" (p 227) "too little sleep" (p 229)

Mika seems disingenuous when she describes the needs of those around her, as she tends to her own: "I escalated the let's take care of Mika program. I went out and bought expensive clothes...I became my own round-the-clock stimulus project. If it's true that you have to spend money to make money, then I would be living proof. I worked on my `makeover' for months, until I was so pleased with the results that I asked the folks at CBS to take a new picture of me." (p 128)

It is quite surprising then, when Mika does not know the name of the Exec. Prod. at CBS' 60 Minutes, Jeff Fager, while she was there: "Naturally, it got around that I didn't know who Jeff Fager was. It also got around that I was meeting with him." (p 162) She had asked two people in her office who Mr. Fager was and either they were too consumed with what they were doing to understand her question, or they were playing dumb, but the third person's response was, "'Who is he?' my friend said incredulous[ly]. 'Ummm, he's only the executive producer of 60 Minutes.'" (p 162) After Ms. Brzezinski has told us, again and again, how important her career is, it is not hard to comprehend why her co-workers were 'incredulous,' when Mika said that she had no idea - who Mr. Fager was...

If Ms. Brzezinski is an example of the `analyst' America has at the gate of reporting, it is no wonder that there is so much confusion and acrimony created by the media. Mika sounds as muddled handling the news, as she does in this book.

Reading this autobiography, with all of Mika's inconsistencies and hypocrisies, it is even harder to take Mika and Morning Joke the duplicitous blowviator seriously. It is a sad commentary on the press, that such a pretentious and phony duo are at the helm of a 'news' program. Mr. Scarborough joked, on air, about the death of a young, female intern found in his Congressional office, and then banned a journalist who mentioned it in a tweet, from appearing on MSNBC. (google: Joe Scarborough intern). Sidekick Mike Barnicle has been fired for plagiarism and fabrication of false quotes (google: Mike Barnicle plagiarism). How unfortunate, and irritatingly confounding, that these sanctimonious, vacuous, vapid 'anchors', have any kind of show, let alone, at a premium time slot.

After reading Ms. Brzezinski's book, one is even more 'incredulous' about that fact.

All Things at Once, by Mika Brzezinski

The best part of this book is Mika's honesty, especially her no-holds barred recounting of a terrible accident with her and her baby, caused due to Mika's exhaustion of stretching herself too thin. But that's really the only positive of this book - it's very short, doesn't contain much of substance, and just generally left me wondering what I had read.

The message Mika's trying to promote is don't wait to have children, and that you can have all things at once...but the message isn't very effective. Admitting that she doesn't see her children all that much (in fact, while covering the events of September 11, 2001, she didn't see them for 20+ days), it appears as if the children are mostly taken care of by domestic help. Mika even writes about an experience where her nine-year-old daughter scheduled her own dentist appointment, rather than waiting for mommy to get around to it. Her year of being a stay-at-home mother failed miserably, as she couldn't cook, do laundry, houseclean, and thought that helping them with homework was hard. She admits she preferred being the "fun" parent, doing water balloon parties or such to make up for missing important events in her kids lives. Mika says she isn't cut out to be a full-time, stay-at-home mother, so I wonder why she wanted kids at all. She wrote about wanting them, and wanting a family in her early 20s, but never said exactly why.

The most interesting parts to me where the descriptions of Mika's parents, Emilie and Zgibniew. It sounds like they had a fascinating home life, and encouraged their children to pursue academics and other interests. I would've preferred to read a book about either of them more than their daughter.

I'm left wondering if she got a book deal only because of "Morning Joe's" popularity; is Willie Geist next in the lineup?

1/5.

I find it almost laughable that this woman is even on television. She is barely coherent unless she's reading the teleprompter (but then Joe is talking over even THAT).

Lately, she sits there while she is on the air, actually signing books! And doing it as if no one can see her! Does she understand what cameras do? Mika, dear, they are more than mirrors.

I am sure this little rich girl, who has not accomplished ONE thing that can't be attributed to the fact that she's the daughter of an arguably intellegent and thoughtful man, probably had someone write this for her.

Why noT? Someone takes care of her children. Even funnier is that she says her children don't mind her being gone. Well, duh! She's a space cadet and self absorbed. Read up on narcissists. This woman is the poster child. Even more horrible is that the male poster child of narcissism is her "co-host." Watching the two of them stumble through three hours each morning (well, not that Mika or Joe are on air every day-each of them has more excuses to be 'absent" than a school chid) is painful. Try those excuses not to come to work lines in the "real world", Mika and Joe.

Did I buy this book? No. I skimmed it at a bookstore. I wish I had it here though so I could quote some of the whine.

Yep, she's got the recipe for success, alright. Sadly, it's just the typical "only the rich" need apply to be able to follow it kind of recipe.

Oh, thank you, Mika, we all feel so much more enlightened by your book. Now could someone at MNBC, please turn out the lights on Joe and Mika. Please. If not, I fear more books, ore wasted space.

I began watching Morning Joe as I got ready in the mornings my senior year in college. The mix of hard hitting news and light hearted banter made me an instant fan of the show, and co-host Mika Brzezinski. As a result I was interested in reading her memoir, though I did not expect to find any correlations or advice that resounded in my entry-level, post college life from such a successful woman with a famous father. I was pleased to find, however, that the honesty Mika writes with creates a must read book full of anecdotes from the unique point of view of a national security advisor's daughter and later succesful journalist, but also of an ambitious business woman and overwhelmed wife/mother. Mika's lifestory is an inspiring example for anyone who has struggled between balancing big career dreams and finding satisfaction in his/her personal life. I expected such a tenacious career woman to take a hard stance against settling down before acheiving corporate sucesss, but Brzezinski imparts sound advice and great perspective on the risks one takes in pursuit of having it all that have taken her her whole life and career to date to realize. A compelling book that you will be better off for having read!

This woman is a nitwit, not to mention and world-class whiner. I don't mind the fact that she has appears to have the intelligence of a clam -- I concede that she must have some redeeming qualities, if only naked, rat-like ambition -- but the sense of entitlement and her warped view of reality is stunning. She is the absolute LAST person to give advice on career and motherhood and combining the two. In fact, I would pay the price of this book 10-fold to sit down with one of her many nannies or babysitters or housekeepers and hear THEIR views. They are the real deal. The women who work for low wages, taking care of another woman's kids (and a woman like Mika Brzeindki who doesn't even have the grace just to say "thank you God for my blessings" and keep her mouth shut and not write a self serving book). My mom raised four kids -- we were all in diapers at the same time at one point -- with no help. I'm a single mom who works very hard and spends every minute I can with my son and have given up a lot so I could be his primary care giver. I know so many single moms and working moms who, again, are the real deal. Do yourself a favor -- if you need advice on career and motherhood, go talk to one of them, not this fool.