This I believe The personal philosophies of remarkable men and women

Book - 2006

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Subjects
Published
New York : H. Holt 2006.
Language
English
Corporate Author
National Public Radio (U.S.)
Corporate Author
National Public Radio (U.S.) (-)
Other Authors
Jay Allison (-), Dan Gediman, John Gregory, Viki Merrick
Physical Description
281 p. : ill
ISBN
9780805080872
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
  • Leaving Identity Issues to Other Folks
  • In Giving I Connect with Others
  • Remembering All the Boys
  • The Mountain Disappears
  • How Is It Possible to Believe in God?
  • The Fellowship of the World
  • There Is No Job More Important than Parenting
  • A Journey toward Acceptance and Love
  • A Shared Moment of Trust
  • The Hardest Work You Will Ever Do
  • Good Can Be as Communicable as Evil
  • A Daily Walk Just to Listen
  • The Elusive Yet Holy Core
  • My Father's Evening Star
  • An Honest Doubter
  • Have I Learned Anything Important Since I Was Sixteen?
  • An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man
  • The Power and Mystery of Naming Things
  • A Goal of Service to Humankind
  • The God Who Embraced Me
  • Unleashing the Power of Creativity
  • The People Who Love You When No One Else Will
  • The Willingness to Work for Solutions
  • The Connection between Strangers
  • An Athlete of God
  • Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures
  • Disrupting My Comfort Zone
  • Science Nourishes the Mind and the Soul
  • In Praise of the "Wobblies"
  • The Power of Presence
  • A Grown-Up Barbie
  • Happy Talk
  • Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being
  • Talking with the Sun
  • A Morning Prayer in a Little Church
  • Our Noble, Essential Decency
  • A New Birth of Freedom
  • The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges
  • There Is No God
  • A Duty to Heal
  • Living Life with "Grace and Elegant Treeness"
  • The Light of a Brighter Day
  • The Bright Lights of Freedom
  • The Power of Love to Transform and Heal
  • The Power of Mysteries
  • Life Grows in the Soil of Time
  • Why I Close My Restaurant
  • The Virtues of the Quiet Hero
  • The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading
  • There Is Such a Thing as Truth
  • The Rule of Law
  • Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing
  • Mysterious Connections That Link Us Together
  • The Making of Poems
  • We Are Each Other's Business
  • The 50-Percent Theory of Life
  • The America I Believe In
  • The Real Consequences of Justice
  • There Is More to Life than My Life
  • Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day
  • Free Minds and Hearts at Work
  • Growth That Starts from Thinking
  • The Artistry in Hidden Talents
  • My Fellow Worms
  • When Children Are Wanted
  • Jazz Is the Sound of God Laughing
  • There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue
  • The People Have Spoken
  • Everything Potent Is Dangerous
  • A Balance between Nature and Nurture
  • Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
  • Always Go to the Funeral
  • Finding Prosperity by Feeding Monkeys
  • I Agree with a Pagan
  • Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel
  • How Do You Believe in a Mystery?
  • Creative Solutions to Life's Challenges
  • Goodness Doesn't Just Happen
  • When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things
  • Afterword: The History of This I Believe: The Power of an Idea
  • Appendix A. Introduction to the 1950s: This I Believe Radio Series
  • Appendix B. How to Write Your Own: This I Believe Essay
  • Appendix C. How to Use This I Believe in Your Community
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

National Public Radio listeners have been moved to tears by the personal essays that constitute the series This I Believe. Created in 1951 with Edward Murrow as host, the sometimes funny, often profound, and always compelling series has been revived, according to host Jay Allison, because, once again, matters of belief divide our country and the world. Oral historian Studs Terkel kicks things off, and 80 personal credos follow. Essays from the original series are interleaved with contemporary essays (selected from more than 11,000 submissions) to create a resounding chorus. English professor Sara Adams avers that one should be cool to the pizza delivery dude. John McCain states, I believe in honor, faith, and service. Iranian-born writer Azar Nafisi writes, I believe in empathy. Jackie Robinson said, I believe in the goodness of a free society. Rick Moody believes in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. Appendixes offer guidelines and resources because the urge to write such declarations is contagious, and schools and libraries have been coordinating This I Believe programs, which we believe is a righteous endeavor. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In the 1950s, the Edward R. Murrow-hosted radio program This I Believe prompted Americans to briefly explain their most cherished beliefs, be they religious or purely pragmatic. Since the program's 2005 renaissance as a weekly NPR segment, Allison (the host) and Gediman (the executive producer) have collected some of the best essays from This I Believe then and now. "Your personal credo" is what Allison calls it in the book's introduction, noting that today's program is distinguished from the 1950s version in soliciting submissions from ordinary Americans from all walks of life. These make up some of the book's most powerful and memorable moments, from the surgeon whose illiterate mother changed his early life with faith and a library card to the English professor whose poetry helped him process a traumatic childhood event. And in one of the book's most unusual essays, a Burmese immigrant confides that he believes in feeding monkeys on his birthday because a Buddhist monk once prophesied that if he followed this ritual, his family would prosper. There are luminaries here, too, including Gloria Steinem, Warren Christopher, Helen Keller, Isabel Allende, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Updike and (most surprisingly, considering the book's more liberal bent) Newt Gingrich. This feast of ruminations is a treat for any reader. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Collected from the radio show of the same name, this anthology features personal statements from a variety of people in the present day and from the 1950s, when the show first aired. Famous speakers such as Eleanor Roosevelt are recorded next to everyday Americans in the 80 pieces selected, each of which receives a short introduction. An outstanding collection of bite-sized wisdom. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Foreword Studs Terkel "At a time when the tide runs toward a sure conformity, when dissent is often confused with subversion, when a man's belief may be subject to investigation as well as his actions . . ." It has the ring of a 2006 mayday call of distress, yet it was written in 1952. Ed Murrow, introducing an assemblage of voices in the volume This I Believe, sounded a claxon. It is an old story yet ever-contemporary. In 1791, Tom Paine, the most eloquent visionary of the American Revolution, sounded off: Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made man afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth is that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing . . . In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be. He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred . . . It is the pursuit of this truth that appears to be the common tenor of all the voices you hear in this new volume. We need not dwell on the old question: What is truth? What you see with your own eyes may differ from the received official truth. So old Pilate had only one decision to make: find the man guilty or he, the judge, will be sent back to the boondocks. Pilate did what any well-behaved hack would do. Though he had his hands scrubbed and rub-a-dub-dubbed with Ivory soap, 99.44% pure, he could not erase the awful truth of the dirt on his hands. Though Pilate's wife pleaded for a show of mercy, he made an objective decision. In our time, James Cameron, the nonpareil of British journalism, dealt with the matter in his own way. "I cannot remember how often I've been challenged for disregarding the fundamental tenet of honest journalism, which is objectivity." His bearing witness in North Vietnam during that war convinced him, despite all official Washington arguments to the contrary, that North Vietnam was inhabited by human beings. He was condemned for being non-objective and having a point of view. Cameron confesses, "I may not have always been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth." Errol Morris, film documentarian, who appears in this book, shares the obstinancy of Cameron: "Truth is not relative. . . . It may be elusive or hidden. People may wish to disregard it. But there is such a thing as truth." What really possesses Morris is the pursuit of the truth: "Trying to figure out what has really happened, trying to figure out how things really are." The chase is what it's all about. The quarry is, as always, the truth. On a small patch of Sag Harbor dirt is a simple stone easily passed by. Nelson Algren is buried there and his epitaph is simple: "The journey is all." Andrew Sullivan, editor of The New Republic, who appears in this volume, has a similar vision. He and Algren may have differed considerably in their political views, yet here, as to fundamental belief, they were as one. "I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit." I'd be remiss with no mention of Helen Keller, whose vision we saw and whose voice we heard fifty years ago, a deaf, dumb, and blind child. It was her sense of wonder and her pursuit of truth which she saw much more clearly than sighted people, and heard much more clearly than hearing folk. They were voices in need throughout the world she heard so vividly. Above all it was her faith that the human being was better than his/her behavior. What I believe is a compote of these ingredients. Yes I do have a point of view which I express much too frequently, I suspect. And yet there's always that uncertainty. In all my adventures among hundreds of Americans I have discovered that the rule of thumb does not work. I've been astonished too often by those I've visited: ordinary Americans, who at times, are extraordinary in their insights and dreams. I find the labels "liberal" and "conservative" of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us. "Liberal" according to any dictionary is defined as the freedom to speak out, no matter what the official word may be, and the right to defend all others who speak out whether or not they agree with you. "Conservative" is the word I've always associated with conserving our environment from pollution, ensuring that our water is potable and our grass green. So I declare myself a radical conservative. Radical, as in getting to the root of things. Pasteur was a radical. Semmelweiss was a radical. "Wash your hands," he declared to doctors and nurses. He may have wound up in a nuthouse, but he pursued the truth, found it, and saved untold millions of lives. I am a conservative in that I'm out to conserve the blue of the sky, the freshness of the air of which we have less and less, the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and whatever semblance of sanity we may have left. As for faith, I've always called myself an agnostic. Were Ambrose Bierce alive today, he would no doubt have added to his Devil's Dictionary: "An agnostic is a cowardly atheist." Perhaps. But perhaps I do believe there is a God deposited in each of us ever since the Big Bang. I secretly envy those who believe in the hereafter and with it the idea that they may once again meet dear ones. They cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is such a place. Neither can I disprove it. I cannot find the bookmaker willing to take my bet on it. How will one who guesses right be able to collect his winnings? So speaking on behalf of the bookies of the world, all bets are off. Maybe the poet Keats was right after all in the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." He envied the fortunate youth who is forever chasing his love, never quite catching her. The pursuit is all. And yet there is something which I believe with no uncertainty. There is something we can do while we're alive and breathing on this planet. It is to become an activist in this pursuit of a world in which it would be easier for people to behave decently. (I am paraphrasing Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement.) Being an activist is self-explanatory: you act; you take part in something outside yourself. You join with others, who may astonish you in thinking precisely as you do on the subjects, say, of war, civil liberties, human rights. My belief came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history, the Great Depression of the 1930s. I remember seeing pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses on the sidewalks. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block, electricians and plumbers and carpenters, who appeared that very evening, and moved the household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas, they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something. Albert Einstein once observed that westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite is the case. Once you join others, even though at first your mission fails, you become a different person, a much stronger one. You feel that you really count, you discover your strength as an individual because you have along the way discovered others share in what you believe, you are not alone; and thus a community is formed. I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that; nobody dares contradict me. So, my credo consists of the pursuit and the act. One without the other is self-indulgence. This I believe. Copyright (c) 2006 by This I Believe, Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpted from This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.