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Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project |  | Creator: Dave Isay
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 25703
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0143114344
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92
EAN: 9780143114345
ASIN: 0143114344
Publication Date: October 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
As heard on NPRa wondrous nationwide celebration of our shared humanity
StoryCorps founder and legendary radio producer Dave Isay selects the most memorable stories from StoryCorps collection, creating a moving portrait of American life.
The voices here connect us to real people and their livesto their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage, and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds. To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or stereotype. We are our history, individually and collectively, and Listening Is an Act of Love touchingly reminds us of this powerful truth.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 54
 as good as it gets November 12, 2007
Richard Cumming (the heartland)
107 out of 107 found this review helpful
This book was published to mark the recent recording of the ten thousandth interview by the StoryCorps Project. Perhaps you have heard excerpts from some of these interviews on National Public Radio?
David Isay had the idea that he wanted to record the stories of regular folks-like you an I. He set up the first recording booth in Grand Central Station. For ten dollars you can record a 40 minute interview. Family members and friends interview each other. A facilitator is there to help out and sometimes to conduct the interview. Recordings are given to the respondents and also put in the Library of Congress with the permission of those who told their stories.
Some incredible stories are being told in the StoryCorps booths that now travel America inside Airstream trailers. Storycorps is preserving our oral history.
This book contains excerpts from interviews with senior citizens who remember the way it was in the olden days. There's a story from a bounty hunter. Another from a woman who survived a jet airliner crash in Iowa. There are the stories of people battling addictions and diseases like AIDS, cancer, and alcoholism.
There are tales of love lost and love found. A child re-unites with his birth mother. A grandchild interviews
the grandmother who took him in from his abusive parents.
Most dramatic of all is the story of a man who escaped from the 105th floor of the World Trade Center after the first tower was hit. He was in the second tower. This story will make your heart race and your tears flow. It's incredible!
What a wonderful book! Studs Terkel, our greatest oral historian loves this book. It reminded this reviewer of that classic book by Studs Terkel; HARD TIMES.
The Wonderful Work of David Isay November 12, 2007
FirstNorn (New York, NY USA)
37 out of 37 found this review helpful
"Listening Is an Act of Love" is truly a book for everyone; I believe it is central to understanding what compassion is all about. By extension, it is clear to me that it is not just about American family and love relationships, but also about the entire human family.
The Stories of Unsung Heroes December 10, 2007
H. F. Corbin (ATLANTA, GA USA)
31 out of 31 found this review helpful
Listeners to National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" on Fridays are familiar with interviews from Dave Isay's StoryCorps project. Here in written form is a collection of some of those essays, along with a photograph of the person being interviewed and usually the interviewer as well. The essays are grouped in "Home and Family," "Work and Dedication," "Journeys," "History and Struggle" and finally "Fire and Water," recollections of survivors of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, certainly some of the most moving interviews in the entire book.
How refreshing in a world gone mad with non-news of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton-- I do not believe I have ever heard either of these women's names mentioned or either public radio or public television-- to listen to and read of ordinary people whose lives are interesting, who have done often noble, unselfish deeds with no pomp and circumstance.
While some of these stories are more engaging than others, to a person each one interviewed here has something to say that touches the reader. There is an interview of a woman reunited with her son whom she gave up for adoption: "Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't do it again" [let her son be adopted]. An eighty-seven-year-old World War II veteran still sees in his dreams the blond, blue-eyed teenaged member of the Hitler Youth he had to kill to save his own life. A forty-nine-year-old prisoner in the Oregon State Penitentiary hopeful of his eventual freedom died from a drug overdose shortly after his interview. A Memphis sanitation worker recalls the death of Martin Luther King. A World War 11 veteran, when asked by the interviewer, his twelve-year-old grandson, one of the standard StoryCorps questions, what was the saddest moment of his life, remembers that while stationed in the Navy in Norfolk, he was refused admission to a movie in D. C. because he was black: "I just walked the streets crying all night, betrayed that my country could force me to fight a war but say, 'You're not a good enough citizen to come to a movie.'" Finally, one of the saddest interviews for me is that of the man who was so lonely that he got a haircut once a week just to have someone touch him.
These are Ken Burns, Charles Bukowski and Studs Terkel (who wrote a blurb for the book) people. Many of these stories rise to the level of poetry. Reading these interviews, at least some of them, reminded me of the time I saw the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another tribute to ordinary Americans, unfurled for the first time in Washington in 1987, the raw emotion, the great pain of loss but also the overwhelming sense of love and connectedness that we all felt on that cold October morning.
These unsentimental stories will warm the cockles of your heart.
A WOW December 5, 2007
Robert Busko (North Carolina)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Compiled by Dave Isay, Listening Is an Act of Love is perhaps one of the most profoundly touching books I've read in many years. As I read the stories I kept having to remind myself that these are true stories told by real people.
The most touching was the 911 story in the Trade Tower. Gripping and moving at the same time.
If you enjoy living history then Listening Is an Act of Love is the book for you.
Peace my friends.
Listening is an Act of Love November 21, 2007
Elizabeth A. Verhoeven (Milwaukee, WI)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
Read this, and then make an appointment to submit an interview to StoryCorps. I interviewed my dad today, and it was a very moving experience. What a great concept!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 54
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