NONFICTION - May 8, 1994

THE MEASURE OF OUR SUCCESS: A Letter to My Children and Yours by Marian Wright Edelman (Beacon: $15; 121 pp.) This is a special second edition, with a new preface by the author, of a book that was, and actually deserves to be, on the best seller list. It’s about as straightforward an effort to make a personal experience useful to others as you’re likely to find, and it has that purity of heart, that unconditional love in its delivery that betrays at least one of its author’s identities: Mother. Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, and one of this country’s leading advocates of children’s rights, finds many reasons to be hopeful in her new preface: the Family and Medical Leave Act, a new federal policy to insure free immunization to every uninsured child, and a Family Preservation Act designed to prevent child abuse.

At the center of this book are Edelman’s 25 lessons for life, and the final section is an appeal for the future of our children, containing the now-famous quote: “Welfare queens can’t hold a candle to corporate kings in raiding the public purse.” Edelman has three sons, one of whom, Jonah, wrote the foreword, and I suppose I would add another measure of success to Edelman’s list, namely, if your own children love you this much and are this proud of you, you’ve done something right.