Interesting commentary here on conversion of African-Americans to Catholicism as well as self-help nature of reading for improvement. Analogizes African-Americans without Catholicism to Mortimer J. Adler as a Jew.

Possible tone of colonialism to assimilate African-Americans into Western Culture here? Though still somehow some space for movement and growth.

What was the purpose of these summaries? Were they of areas which weren't readily apparent in hindsight? Often most people's long summaries are really just encapsulalizations of what is apparent from the book jacket. Why bother with this? If they're just summaries of the obvious, then they're usually useless for review specifically because they're obvious. This is must make-work.

You want to pull out the specific hard-core insights that weren't obvious to you from the jump.

Most self-help books can be motivating while reading them and the motivation can be helpful, but generally they will only contain one or two useful ideas