Surviving Jonathan
The 360 Degrees of Resilience
A CEO looks back at his winding path to success in the inspiring memoir Surviving Jonathan.
Jonathan Crawford’s memoir–cum–leadership book Surviving Jonathan is about rising from addiction to become a CEO.
Beginning with accounts of Crawford’s drug use following his sister’s death by suicide, costing him a promising job and compromising his new marriage, this intimate memoir includes vulnerable stories about Crawford stealing from his family and dismantling his house in order to pay for his next fix. It muses through the troubled family dynamics of his youth, the pains of having an absent father, and gang violence in his Los Angeles neighborhood.
After attaining sobriety, Crawford returned to work with a telecommunications company. A string of promotions followed. He worked through his own insecurities along the way. In time, he was selected to be the company’s CEO.
The prose is gripping, vivified by details such as that it took just six weeks to go from trying cocaine to spending entire paychecks on it. The book also notes that Crawford lost twenty pounds after six months of using it and that he accomplished thirty days clean in rehabilitation only to relapse the day of his release. It conveys his increasing feelings of desperation to obtain another hit with mentions of him betraying his wife’s trust by selling a gift, ripping out their toilet to pawn, and living in his car.
Not all of the scenes are developed in full, though, as with a desperate scene that begins with expressions of suicidal ideation that are later suggested to have been faked, causing confusion. In addition, the point in time when Crawford got clean, which should be one of the book’s most gratifying moments, is glossed over and anticlimactic.
Further, the book takes a jarring shift from memoir territory to delivering leadership advice. The change happens in tandem with Crawford’s deepening telecommunications career, after which the book’s structure changes to pronounce clear themes and takeaway points. It lessons are aphoristic, if well illustrated by Crawford’s story, including the idea that “carrying the weight of leadership isn’t about perfection or control” but “about progress and connection, learning to live in the tension of growth and recognizing that every struggle is shaping you into someone capable of carrying even more.”
Surviving Jonathan is a CEO’s intimate memoir about coming back from addiction through self-reflection and hard work.
Reviewed by
Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
