This I Believe

Description

“A welcome change from the sloganeering, political mudslinging and products of spin doctors.”—The Philadelphia InquirerBased on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty Americans—from the famous to the unknown—completing the thought that the book’s title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others.
Featuring many renowned contributors—including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk in Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on Rhode Island’s parole board.
The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best.

An inspiring collection of the personal philosophies and core values of a fascinating group of Americans

Jay Allison is one of public radio’s most honored producers. He has produced hundreds of nationally broadcast documentaries and features for radio and television. His work has earned him the duPont-Columbia and five Peabody Awards, and he was the 1996 recipient of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding contributions to public radio, the industry’s highest honor. He was the curator and producer of This I Believe on NPR and he produces The Moth Radio Hour. Before his career in broadcasting, Jay was a theater director in Washington, D.C. He is also the founder of the public radio stations for Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod where he lives.
Dan Gediman is the executive producer of This I Believe. His work has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Marketplace, Jazz Profiles, and This American Life. He has won many of public broadcasting’s most prestigious awards, including the duPont-Columbia Award.

Foreword
Studs Terkel
Introduction
Jay Allison
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
Leaving Identity Issues to Other Folks
Phyllis Allen
In Giving I Connect with Others
Isabel Allende
Remembering All the Boys
Elvia Bautista
The Mountain Disappears
Leonard Bernstein
How Is It Possible to Believe in God?
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Fellowship of the World
Niven Busch
There is No Job More Important than Parenting
Benjamin Carson
A Journey toward Acceptance and Love
Greg Chapman
A Shared Moment of Trust
Warren Christopher
The Hardest Work You Will Ever Do
Mary Cook
Good Can Be as Communicable as Evil
Norman Corwin
A Daily Walk Just to Listen
Susan Cosio
The Elusive Yet Holy Core
Kathy Dahlen
My Father’s Evening Star
William O. Douglas
An Honest Doubter
Have I Learned Anything Important Since I Was Sixteen?
Elizabeth Deutsch Earle
An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man
Albert Einstein
The Power and Mystery of Naming Things
Eve Ensler
A Goal of Service to Humankind
Anthony Fauci
The God Who Embraced Me
John W. Fountain
Unleashing the Power of Creativity
Bill Gates
The People Who Love You When No One Else Will
Cecile Gilmer
The Willingness to Work for Solutions
Newt Gingrich
The Connection between Strangers
Miles Goodwin
An Athlete of God
Martha Graham
Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures
Temple Grandin
Disrupting My Comfort Zone
Brian Grazer
Science Nourishes the Mind and the Soul
Brian Greene
In Praise of the “Wobblies”
Ted Gup
The Power of Presence
Debbie Hall
A Grown-Up Barbie
Jane Hamill
Happy Talk
Oscar Hammerstein II
Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being
Victor Hanson
Talking with the Sun
Joy Harjo
A Morning Prayer in a Little Church
Helen Hayes
Our Noble, Essential Decency
Robert A. Heinlein
A New Birth of Freedom
Maximilian Hodder
The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges
Kay Redfield Jamison
There Is No God
Penn Jillette
A Duty to Heal
Pius Kamau
Living Life with “Grace and Elegant Treeness”
Ruth Kamps
The Light of a Brighter Day
Helen Keller
The Bright Lights of Freedom
Harold Hongju Koh
The Power of Love to Transform and Heal
Jackie Lantry
The Power of Mysteries
Alan Lightman
Life Grows in the Soil of Time
Thomas Mann
Why I Close My Restaurant
George Mardikian
The Virtues of the Quiet Hero
John McCain
The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading
Rick Moody
There Is Such a Thing as Truth
Errol Morris
The Rule of Law
Michael Mullane
Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing
Cecilia Muñoz
Mysterious Connection That Link Us Together
Azar Nafisi
The Making of Poems
Gregory Orr
We Are Each Other’s Business
Eboo Patel
The 50-Percent Theory of Life
Steve Porter
The America I Believe In
Colin Powell
The Real Consequences of Justice
Frederic Reamer
There Is More to Life than My Life
Jamaica Ritcher
Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day
Josh Rittenberg
Free Minds and Hearts at Work
Jackie Robinson
Growth That Starts from Thinking
Eleanor Roosevelt
The Artistry in Hidden Talents
Mel Rusnov
My Fellow Worms
Carl Sandburg
When Children Are Wanted
Margaret Sanger
Jazz Is the Sound of God Laughing
Colleen Shaddox
There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue
Jason Sheehan
The People Have Spoken
Mark Shields
Everything Potent Is Dangerous
Wallace Stegner
A Balance between Nature and Nurture
Gloria Steinem
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Andrew Sullivan
Always Go to the Funeral
Deirdre Sullivan
Finding Prosperity by Feeding Monkeys
Harold Taw
I Agree with a Pagan
Arnold Toynbee
Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel
John Updike
How Do You Believe in a Mystery?
Loudon Wainwright III
Creative Solutions to Life’s Challenges
Frank X Walker
Goodness Doesn’t Just Happen
Rebecca West
When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things
Jody Williams
Afterword: The History of This I Believe: The Power of an Idea
Dan Gediman
Appendix A: Introduction to the 1950s This I Believe Radio Series
Edward R. Murrow
Appendix B: How to Write Your Own This I Believe Essay
Appendix C: How to Use This I Believe in Your Community
Acknowledgments

Discussion Questions
1. Studs Terkel’s foreword raises the question of truth and how we discern it. What do the essays in This I Believe tell us about the way we go about deciding what is true and what should not be believed? Do you think there are any absolute truths that apply to everyone?
2. In two essays reflecting the toll of war, Newt Gingrich emphasizes the need for vigilance (“I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place”), while John McCain celebrates the power of the quiet hero (“The true worth of a person is measured by how faithfully we serve a cause greater than our self-interest”). What is your approach to the tides of danger and victory, destruction and reconstruction that have shaped the world for as long as history has been recorded? Do you think the future can be more peaceful than the past?
3. Several of the essays describe discrimination, such as Phyllis Allen’s recollections of growing up in a racially segregated town, and Eve Ensler’s observations about atrocities committed against women. What do you believe is at the root of discriminatory behavior? What causes some members of society to feel justified in causing the suffering of entire populations? How can we ensure equality in the face of the forces behind discrimination?
4. What did you observe about the essays from half a century ago compared with contemporary ones? Which issues have remained constant? What new ones have arisen that Edward R. Murrow’s generation could not have imagined?
5. Questions of mortality and immortality are raised throughout the book, from Isabel Allende’s response to her daughter’s death to Elvia Bautista’s experience of visiting her brother’s grave. At the heart of many of these essays is the notion that love endures beyond a person’s lifetime. How does this book define a life well lived and a grief that is not in vain?
6. Martha Graham’s “An Athlete of God” closes by describing the acrobat as “practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall.” In what way does this describe the tandem of fear and faith experienced in our daily lives? What does it take to “choose” not to fall?
7. What is the role of art and whimsy in shaping our beliefs? What do the contributors’ words about fashion, reading, jazz, and other creative ventures say about the significance or value of imagination?
8. In “Seeing Beautiful, Precise Pictures,” Temple Grandin describes how her ability to visualize resulted in humane new procedures for numerous livestock-handling facilities. What ethical balance shapes her work? What small vision could you translate into grand action in your community?
9. The contributors to this book express a broad variety of viewpoints about religious beliefs, including the belief that there is no God (Penn Jillette) and the belief that we should protect our fellow human beings from harm, even when their religious affiliations are quite different from ours (Eboo Patel). What cultural observations are made in the essays on religion? What is its role in shaping identities and worldviews?
10. Benjamin Carson pays eloquent tribute to his mother in “There Is No Job More Important than Parenting.” What qualities make her a good parent? What beliefs enabled her to sustain and inspire her son? Who has held a similar role of redemption in your life?
11. In what ways does This I Believe serve as a time capsule for the dawn of a new millennium? What conclusions will future readers draw about our era when reading these entries in another half century?
12. Which of the essays resonated with you the most? Did any of them inspire you to become an agent for change, either globally or simply in the way you affect the life of another individual?
13. What do you believe? What were your greatest influences in shaping those beliefs? How have your beliefs changed throughout your life?

“To hold this range of beliefs in the palm of your hand is as fine, as grounding, as it was hearing them first on the radio. Heartfelt, deeply cherished beliefs, doctrines for living (yet none of them doctrinaire). Ideas and ideals that nourish. You can see it in their faces, in the photos in this book. And read it in their words. I’m so proud that NPR helped carry this Edward R. Murrow tradition into a new century. And so glad to have it in print, to encounter again and again.” —Susan Stamberg, special correspondent, National Public Radio“My father, Edward R. Murrow, said that “fresh ideas” from others helped him confront his own challenges. This superb collection of thought-provoking This I Believe essays, both from the new program heard on NPR and from the original 1950s series, provides fresh ideas for all of us!” —Casey Murrow, Elementary education publisher“Reading this gives me a feeling about this country I rarely get: a very visceral sense of all the different kinds of people who are living together here, with crazily different backgrounds and experiences and dreams. Like a Norman Rockwell painting where all the people happen to be real people, and all the stories are true. It makes me feel hopeful about America, reading this. Hopeful in a way that’s in short supply lately.” —Ira Glass, Producer and Host of This American Life“Now, as then, when Edward R. Murrow introduced the idea of This I Believe, this forward-thinking compilation serves as a wonderful antidote to the cynicism of the age.” —Daniel Schorr, Senior News Analyst, NPR, and former colleague of Edward R. Murrow

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