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3 Burnside Anthologies- Essays


Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project

by Dave Isay

Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project Cover

ISBN13: 9781594201400
ISBN10: 1594201404
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Drawn from the work of StoryCorps, the largest and most ambitious oral history project in American history, comes this tapestry of the stories Americans have been sharing from their lives to leave behind to their loved ones. In its two permanent public recording booths in New York City, at Grand Central and at Ground Zero, and its two mobile booths touring the country, StoryCorps, the most ambitious oral history project in American history, has collected the memories of people from all fifty states and every imaginable walk of life, background, identity group, age, and state of mind-more than ten-thousand in all. It is a wondrous nationwide celebration of our shared humanity, capturing for posterity the stories that define us and bond us together.

In small towns and big cities, from Indian reservations in the Pacific Northwest to army bases in North Carolina, StoryCorps has brought people together to share the treasures of their lives in story. In Listening Is an Act of Love, Dave Isay selects the most remarkable stories from the entire astonishing pool of memories. He arranges them thematically to form a mosaic of American life and binds them together with the history and principles of the StoryCorps project. The voices here connect us to a broad range of real people whose lives are filled with ordinary, extraordinary things — joy, sadness, courage, meaning, despair, good work and bad work, good times and hard times.

To read this book is to be reminded how wildly varied and interesting Americans really are, how resistant to easy categorization and caricatures. Above all, this book is a way to honor the gift of meaning that each participant in StoryCorps has made, out of the raw stuffof his or her life, to the people who come after. In a very real sense, we are our history, individually and collectively, as Listening Is an Act of Love so powerfully reminds us.

Review:

"Four years ago. StoryCorps set out to record an oral history of America with the voices of everyday people. This book is a collection of the most compelling excerpts from more than 10,000 interviews recorded, compiled by StoryCorps founder Isay (Flophouse), a radio documentary producer and MacArthur fellow. And they are compelling. Each one captures a moment in time — historical, emotional or personal — that make us who we are. As simple stories of humanity, each one has its own potency, with themes of family, love, dedication and struggle. In one of the most emotionally wrought stories, a father sits down with his daughter and remembers her late mother and older brother, who both died of cancer within months of each other. To gather the stories, StoryCorps provides a facility, recording equipment and a facilitator, then waits for people to invite loved ones, friends, grandparents to sit down for a 40-minute session. A copy of the tape is filed in the Library of Congress, and parts have aired on NPR. As Isay says, 'I realized how many people among us feel completely invisible, believe their lives don't matter, and fear they'll someday be forgotten.' Photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Dave Isay's vision of collecting the everyday stories of Americans is so simple and yet so powerful. Listening Is an Act of Love will make you laugh, cry and think. These stories come from the souls of individual Americans. Collectively, they are who we are as a people. You cannot read this book without feeling proud of your country." Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley

Review:

"Here are the observations and memories of a giant, diverse nation's citizens. In its sum, StoryCorps asks Americans to reflect upon their experiences, their times of travail, their achievements. In so doing, these individuals create an encompassing national narration: a people's hopes, fears and aspirations, all rendered poignantly to attentive listeners whose respect has enabled, finally, a presentation of a people's mind, heart, soul." Dr. Robert Coles, James Agee Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University

Review:

"This book is absolutely remarkable. Listening is an Act of Love is history in the richest sense of the word, the kind that makes people feel like they count. It's a celebration of the lives of the uncelebrated. In our world today people feel helpless, but once they speak of their lives they become alive! This is what our country is all about. Never has a book been more timely or necessary." Studs Terkel

About the Author

Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and its parent company, Sound Portraits Productions. Over the past two decades his radio documentary work has won nearly every award in broadcasting, including four Peabody awards, two RFK awards, and two Livingston awards. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the author or coauthor of four books, including Holding On, Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago, and Flophouse: Life on the Bowery.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Grady Harp, June 13, 2009 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
'Listening is an act of love.'

What could have been a gimmick for selling a book - creating booths where everyday folk could enter undisturbed and simply talk about experiences, life, pain, joy, sorrow and exhilaration to be later transcribed and edited into a book of 'interviews' - has in the hands of StoryCorps Project's Dave Isay become a verbal history of this country at a time when positive reinforcement is so desperately needed.

In a short but tender Introduction Isay sets the tenor: 'StoryCorps is built on a few basic ideas - that our stories - the stories of everyday people - are as interesting and important as the celebrity stories we're bombarded with by the media every day. That if we take time to listen, we'll find wisdom, wonder, and poetry in the lives and stories of people all around us. That we all want to know our lives have mattered and we won't be forgotten. That listening is an act of love.'

What follows are stories from quiet people with much to say, tales that may at first seem inconsequential until the reader realizes these are truths shared generously by a wide spectrum of people. Many issues are addressed and each seems to supplement the overall feeling that every voice in the country is equally important, that there are no greater or better stories collected here. This is as 'democratic' a collection as possible.

At the end of the book is an invitation to each reader to participate in StoryCorps, an open ended guide on how to select storytellers, subject questions to ask, and favorite StoryCorps questions. Reading this book leaves us with a feeling of warmth and awareness and human kindness. Well worth keeping at the bedside! Grady Harp
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781594201400
Subtitle:
A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project
Author:
Isay, Dave
Publisher:
Penguin Press
Subject:
Personal Memoirs
Subject:
History
Subject:
National characteristics, american
Subject:
United states
Subject:
United States History 1945-
Publication Date:
November 2007
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
304
Dimensions:
8.48x6.04x1.10 in. 1.04 lbs.

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