The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Paul Rogat LoebEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-18
ISBN: 0465041663
Number of pages: 422
Publisher: Basic Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780465041664
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
Book Review: Superb Collection, Needs to Identify Original Pieces
Summary: 5 Stars
Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links to more recent books along these lines.
My title page, where I put my summary notes, is covered with writing. The first and most important point: this is not a "do gooder feel good" book--it is a compelling, absorbing book that lays out some good insights and provides an antidote to paralysis and dispair. It is, in short, a book that inspires many small actions that in the aggregate could lead to revolutionary improvements in democracy and our quality of life.
It took a lot of work to put this book together, including getting all the copyright permissions, and if I had one complaint, it is that I have already read many of these older items (e.g. Mandela, Havel, Martin Luther King) and it was too difficult to find the original pieces commissioned just for this book. Having said that--as a 52 year old that reads a great deal--I would quickly say that if you want to introduce younger people to great thinkers in the democratic tradition, it would be hard to do better than this book as a "reader."
The book is also complemented by the online aids for further study and for reading group discussion.
I thought of my teen-ager as I read the book, and wrote his name in several places on the margin--this book is relevant to parents dealing with very smart young people who may tend to say "I'm never having children" because the world is going to hell.
At a tactical level, this book complements Bill Moyer's "Doing Democracy," and is a personal counterpart to Jonathan Schell's work, "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People."
I put the book down with one big thought ably communicated by this book: The problem among us is not that we lack power, but that we lack the will and perspective to use the power that we do have in small ways that add up to big power in the aggregate.
See also, with reviews:
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen
More The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear reviews:
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Summary of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
In The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a phrase borrowed from Billie Holliday, the editor of Soul of a Citizen brings together fifty stories and essays that range across nations, eras, wars, and political movements. Danusha Goska, an Indiana activist with a paralyzing physical disability, writes about overcoming political immobilization, drawing on her history with the Peace Corps and Mother Teresa. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, finds value in seemingly doomed or futile actions taken by oppressed peoples. Rosemarie Freeney Harding recalls the music that sustained the civil rights movement, and Paxus Calta-Star recounts the powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria's dictatorship. Many of the essays are new, others classic works that continue to inspire. Together, these writers explore a path of heartfelt community involvement that leads beyond despair to compassion and hope. The voices collected in The Impossible Will Take a Little While will help keep us all working for a better world despite the obstacles.
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