By Elle Luna
176 pages, hardcover, $16.95. Published by Workman Publishing Company, workman.com
Every generation gets a self-help book to call its own. A generation in the ’70s graduated college with What Color Is Your Parachute? In the ’90s, we were told to Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. Now comes The Crossroads of Should and Must, a handbook to finding and following your passion.
Written and lavishly illustrated by Elle Luna, the book is a personal description of her journey from a career to a calling. Luna left behind enviable design jobs at Mailbox, Uber and IDEO to focus full time on her personal art and writing in 2013. Her singular passion and particular insight inform every page of the book, which bursts with rainbow-colored, hand-drawn affirmations and watercolor illustrations. Luna gently, but relentlessly encourages her readers to confront the really big decision they must make in their lives: between the things we should do to conform to society’s expectation of adult behavior and the thing we must do to become our authentic self.
Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Luna knows exactly who forged those chains. And she has a simple solution to escape them: Save up enough money to live free from your “shoulds” for a few months, then go for it. —Sam McMillan
