Where There's A Will There's A Way
Or, All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare
Shakespeare: the ultimate self-help guru and life coach. Bard expert Laurie Maguire brings her knowledge and love of Shakespeare to bear on the great-and small-challenges that everybody faces. As she illustrates in this witty, accessible, and unique self-help book, all one really needs is Shakespeare when it comes to understanding life. Covering such universal subjects as love and hate, the battle of the sexes, family relationships, and loss and death, Maguire shows how the dilemmas illustrated in Shakespeare's plays can help readers explore their own emotions and judgments. Together, Maguire and Shakespeare offer suggestions, comfort, empathy, and encouragement as they set out a timeless principle for living. To read Shakespeare is to understand what it means to be human. To read Where There's a Will is to better understand how to cope.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Self-Help, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Self-Help · Nonfiction · Fiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
Catalog signals suggest warfare and conflict, violence, death, or criminal harm, grief and loss, sexual material. These notes may not be complete; consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.
These notes are inferred from available catalog information and may not be complete. Check a publisher or reader-supplied guide if you need comprehensive warnings.
Balanced tone · Steady pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
A visual estimate based on this edition's categories, description, and length. Select a star to explore the signals.
This signal is descriptive, not a rating. It helps compare the kind of reading experience this edition may offer.
Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
A broad estimate of the book’s emotional rhythm, shown without story events or outcomes.
This visualization is an interpretive estimate based on catalog description, categories, tone, pace, and content signals. It does not describe specific scenes.
A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3995-3367-9
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9767904M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Self-Help, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Which ideas feel usable in your actual circumstances—not only persuasive on the page?
- Where does the author distinguish evidence, experience, and opinion?
- What would a small, humane experiment with one idea look like?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
More Self-Help books
These matches combine shared categories with author, publication-era, and reading-length signals.
Ignite the Genius Within
by Christine Ranck, Christopher Lee Nutter
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
The Greatest Miracle in the World
by Og Mandino
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction, a similar publication era.
Game of Life and How to Play It
by Florence Scovel Shinn
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction.
Child Sexual Abuse
by Nigel Parton, Corinne Wattam
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
Everyday ambassador
by Kate Otto
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
If you feel too much
by Jamie Tworkowski
Why it fits: shares Self-Help and Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.