Randy Pausch with Jeffery Zaslow
Hyperion 2008
I was totally disappointed in this book.
It was given to me by my boss's boss as an office Christmas present 2 or 3 years ago. I thought then that it would be a good read.
Boy. Was I wrong.
I'm not trying to knock on the guy. His lecture became famous because it was kind of moving, but moreso because the dude giving it knew he was dying. That's, in my opinion, the only reason this book got as far as it did.
One might think that it took a tremendous amount of courage to do what Pausch did, and it might have. But if you watch the lecture and read the book I think you'll see that this is how Pausch would've just rolled. He seems to be a
Humility is not one of the traits one thinks of when describing a professional academic.
The book seems to be an afterthought. If this guy wasn't about to die when he wrote this, people would have said, "Well, he's just trying to capitalize on the success of his speech." Well, the speech wouldn't have been that successful if he wasn't about to die when he made it.
So, lets forget about the whole dying thing and judge this book on its own.
It's not that great. Even if you do consider the man's mortality at the time he was writing this.... meh. It's not particularly interesting, and a lot of the "morals" of the little chapters are quite a bit of a stretch.
"Blah blah blah, I found an empty plastic bottle, blah blah blah, then I realized that being nice is a good thing."
I was wholly unimpressed.
Again, if the dude hadn't been dying, this wouldn't have even made it to press. This book was an exercise in situation exploitation.
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