In this candid memoir, celebrity news anchorwoman Gretchen Carlson shares her inspiring story and offers important takeaways about what it means to strive for and find success in the real world. With warmth and wit, she takes readers from her Minnesota childhood, when she became a violin prodigy, through attending Stanford and later rising to anchor of The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News after working her way up from local television stations.

Carlson addresses the intense competitive effort of winning the Miss America Pageant, the challenges she's faced as a woman in broadcast television, and how she manages to balance work and family as the wife of high-profile sports agent Casey Close and devoted mother to their two children. An unceasing advocate for respect and equality for women, Carlson writes openly about her own struggles with body image, pageant stereotypes, building her career, and having the courage to speak her mind. Encouraging women to believe in themselves, chase their dreams, and never give up, Carlson emerges in Getting Real as a living example of personal strength and perseverance.