Will the Circle Be Unbroken? : Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

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Summary: Meet people you'd never get to know.
Review: A book to gain insight into the minds of a variety walks of life living in the Chicago area. I felt like I got to know quite a few new people each time I read Terkel's latest.

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Summary: Find the Power to Heal and understand
Review: After reading many books by several empowering authors such as Betty Eadie, John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and Tiffany Snow, that I am still reading, my life has opened up to me in such a compelling and wonderful way. This new book is well written, and thought provoking. There are great transforming authors, who shift the consciousness of humankind in a way never known before, and have the courage to reveal their paranormal experiences. "Will the Circle" is one of these.

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Summary: Looking beyond Terkel
Review: I find it hard to believe that anyone would rate this book below 5 stars, but I suppose at 71 years on this planet and having to deal with the diverse people that I have encounered, I should simply say that it's not suprising,and diversity is exactly what this book is about, that is if one can clear old mind sets and place originality of thought in it's place.
Mr. Terkel allows this diversity of the human Psyche to play itself out in this well constructed biographical enterprise.
I personally found this book to be a refreshing and interesting approach to the subject of death and highly recommend it, unless of course one is still thinking that he or she is immortal.

Rating:
Summary: Looking beyond Terkel
Review: I find it hard to believe that anyone would rate this book below 5 stars, but I suppose at 71 years on this planet and having to deal with the diverse people that I have encounered, I should simply say that it's not suprising,and diversity is exactly what this book is about, that is if one can clear old mind sets and place originality of thought in it's place.
Mr. Terkel allows this diversity of the human Psyche to play itself out in this well constructed biographical enterprise.
I personally found this book to be a refreshing and interesting approach to the subject of death and highly recommend it, unless of course one is still thinking that he or she is immortal.

Rating:
Summary: Different Perspectives are Refreshing
Review: I liked this book. Some people hit my own personal beliefs right on the head and some people had beliefs that I don't agree with. It was interesting to see the many different perspectives on death and I found it to be very thought-provoking. To be honest, after reading this book, I am less afraid of dying. I am more concerned with living in the here and now and making the most of it. After reading this book, I have decided that if there is something beyond this life--wonderful. If not, wonderful. If we can leave behind good memories, then we never really die. I recommend this book. It's not depressing, it's actually comforting.

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Summary: How should we then live?
Review: Loaned out, re-read, quoted, and read aloud to youth groups and adults, this is a book that may become a classic. The insights are varied, the sentiment often raw, but the feelings shared by those highlighted in each chapter are obviously real. I was especially moved by the contrast between the husband and wife who's son was shot. They each have their own story and each challenges my desire to sit back and avoid thinking about how I might react if ever in their situation. "How should we then live?" has been addressed in another book. This might summed up as "How should we treat death?" Definately food for thought, new insights arise each time I read the very personal accounts. Perhaps a future printing will add Terkel's summations. That would add the final star!

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Summary: Different Perspectives are Refreshing
Review: Maybe you think about mortality all the time, maybe you've never considered it for more than a moment. Either way, there are likely to be voices in Studs Terkel's most recent oral history, on the subject of death and what might or might not come after, that will speak to you. It's quite a range of speakers, young and old, funny and sad, religious and otherwise. I'll admit that some sections of the book were of less interest to me than others, but I've ended up giving it a top rating because the parts I liked, I liked a great deal. Also, as profound (and potentially depressing) as the subject matter is, the book is an oddly refreshing thing to read. I think this is partly *because* the subject is a big and eternal one, not something fleeting or connected to today's headlines. (Mortality, I suppose, is the one thing we all have in common.) And it's partly because the voices for the most part are so fresh and unvarnished -- it's common to complain that we don't hear enough from "real people" in the media (unless they're hurling insults at each other on Springer or whatever). Here a wide cross section of individuals speak their mind, and while a few are well-known, most seem to have been selected for another reason: they had something wise or thoughtful to say.

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Summary: Didn't deliver what I expected
Review: Perhaps my expectations were too high for this book, but I didn't think it delivered. The book is composed of about 60 short chapters, each one being the story of a different person, relating what part of Chicago they grew up in, what kind of career they had, what experiences they had in dealing with death of customers or loved ones, etc. The chapters read like Readers Digest-type vignettes - some interesting, some dull, not too many very inspiring. Each story is a quotation of the person's answers to Stud's questions, although we normally don't see the questions. They read like newspaper interviews. Nowhere do we get any comment, opinions, or analysis from Studs himself - we never know what he thinks about the stories, or their relevance to the subject of dying and the afterlife. We can only infer from the stories he selects what his thoughts might be. We can reduce most of the stories to these summary thoughts: 1.)Some people are afraid of dying, and some people are not; 2.)Some people believe in a life after death, some people do not, and some people don't know what to think; and 3.)Some people are very religious, and some people are not. If you already know these things, you may not get many new insights from this book. Studs doens't bother to provide any kind of summary or analysis of his own.

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Summary: Amazingly Poignant and Timely Given September 11, 2001
Review: Studs Terkel, a Chicago treasure and Pulitzer Prize winner, could not have predicted how the release of his latest book would coincide with the events of September 11, 2001, in an amazingly poignant and timely fashion. Like his other books, this one is a collection of interviews with a broad selection of people from all walks of life. Terkel, seeking a way to cope with the death of his wife of 60 years, Ida, set out on a project to examine what people thought about the one experience we will all have but will not be able to describe once we've had it: Death. The Prologue, interviews with two New York City brothers, revisits them from an earlier book. How uncanny that one is a fireman, one a policeman. I got goosebumps reading about events at the World Trade Center before September 11th. The stories are, when all is said and done, a celebration of life and, for want of a better word, "spirit." For anyone searching for meaning in recent events in America, this book will be a tremendous solace. The book ends with Mamie Mobley, mother of Emmett Till (whose murder in the '60's was as much the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement as Rosa Parks' bus seat) and I cried through the whole chapter. The epilogue, a story of two women and two children is the perfect ending of this examination of life, death and family. Had the events of September 11th never happened, I would have recommended this book highly. Because of September 11th, this book just has to be a "best seller."

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Summary: Find the Power to Heal and understand
Review: The compelling aspect of the book is the way strangers recount the essence of their lives in the space of several pages. What they have done, seen, felt and thought and how it all shapes their views on death and the possibility of afterlife. Some of the stories are inspiring, tragic or deeply moving. Some are mundane. All are authentic. The nature of the book is that the author makes no assessments, offers no opinion and provides no comprehensive or intergrating perspective. Like a miner sifting through tons of ore for a few nuggests, the reader goes through 60 interviews and in the end must decide if the rewards were worth the effort. An apt parable for life itself.