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Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)
by John McCain, Mark Salter
| Category:
Morals and responsibility, Character education, Parenting |
| Market price: ¥ 170.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
An impeccably inspiring book with words and stories to implement and live by. Highly recommended. |
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Author: John McCain, Mark Salter
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Pub. in: August, 2007
ISBN: 081297445X
Pages: 336
Measurements: 8 x 7.9 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01566
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0812974454
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- Awards & Credential -
New York Times bestseller. |
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- MSL Picks -
In a manner similar to then-Senator John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" in 1955, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has co-written, with his regular writing partner Mark Salter, a straightforward book about 34 historical figures, both famous and forgotten, all of whom followed their conscience against seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve their sense of truth and decency. Depending on your political affiliation, the publication seems either ironic given the declining level of trust for the current administration and its leader, or timely given McCain's own Presidential aspirations. Perhaps to escape such scrutiny, McCain and Salter have targeted their book to young adults who are otherwise ignored by such politicians except in polemics such as promising increased subsidies for higher education. This decision is admittedly crafty, but fortunately, the co-authors handle their history lesson in a non-condescending way that makes it constructive reading for readers of any age.
The overriding message they want to convey is that there is nothing circumstantial when it comes to people who achieve greatness, that in fact, they achieve greatness as a result of their own character. McCain's message of being responsible for one's own happiness resonates, and he modestly assesses himself as a work-in-progress in this regard. The book is rather arbitrarily organized into seven categories - honor, purpose, strength, understanding, judgment, creativity and love - under which he identifies individuals who represent key aspects of those criteria for greatness. The expected figures are included, legendary martyrs such as Joan of Arc (under "Honor" epitomizing authenticity), Thomas More (representing honesty) and Nelson Mandela (showing forgiveness in the "Understanding" section). Four US Presidents are included - Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower - though interestingly and probably intentionally, no Democrats are on their short list.
The real value of the book, however, is reacquainting, and in some cases, introducing readers to figures with far less renown for deeds of comparable courage, such as Aung San Suu Kyi for her non-violent resistance to the repressive military regime in Myanmar; Mother Antonia, who sacrificed a privileged lifestyle to work as a Catholic sister with prisoners in some of Mexico's worst prisons; and Oseola McCarty, a washerwoman who gave away her life savings to help students get into the University of Southern Mississippi. I even appreciate the inclusion of a more controversial selection such as Charles Darwin for his curiosity even though his theories about evolution are at odds with the religious right. McCain gets more personal by including under a section on faith, the Christian guard at Hua Lo Prison where he was otherwise tortured as a POW during the Vietnam War. It's a revelation that makes the list feel more personal even though no one would argue with most of the choices here. Whatever the political motivation, McCain and Salter have done us a favor by celebrating the human spirit through the courage of these 34 individuals.
(From quoting Ed Uyeshima, USA)
Target readers:
Children and pre-teens aged 10-16 if they are native English speakers, parents and teachers.
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After a career in the U.S. Navy and two terms as a U.S. representative, John McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 and reelected in 1992 and 1998. He and his wife, Cindy, reside in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mark Salter has worked on Senator McCain's staff for more than 15 years. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife, Diane, and their two daughters.
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From Publisher
In Character is Destiny, McCain tells the stories of celebrated historical figures and lesser-known heroes whose values exemplify the best of the human spirit. He illustrates these qualities with moving stories of triumph against the odds, righteousness in the face of iniquity, hope in adversity, and sacrifices for a cause greater than self-interest. The tributes he pays here to men and women who have lived truthfully will stir the hearts of young and old alike, and help prepare us for the hard work of choosing our destiny.
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Part One
Honor
Greatness knows itself. - Henry IV
HONESTY
Thomas More
He surrendered everything for the truth as he saw it,and shamed a king with the courage of his conscience.
Such a scene it must have been, that it broke the hardest heart that witnessed it. Margaret More Roper, beloved oldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, pushed through the crowd and past the armed guards to embrace and cover her father with kisses as he was escorted to his place of imprisonment, from where, in six days, he would be executed for the crime of being honest.
Thomas More blessed his daughter and tenderly consoled her before she reluctantly let go of him, and the somber party resumed its progress to the Tower of London. But her distress was too great to be restrained, and she again rushed to his side, to hold and kiss him. Her husband, William Roper, remembered that most of the large crowd that had gathered in curiosity to see the famous prisoner, who had been one of the most powerful men in England, wept at the sight of this sad parting of a loving father and daughter.
Thomas More was born in 1478 into a prosperous London family, but not part of the nobility that ruled England in the fifteenth century. The Mores had no inherited titles to ease their way in the world. They succeeded by their own industry, intelligence, and character. Thomas's father, John, was a successful and influential lawyer, who could afford to send his oldest son to a good school, St. Anthony's, where young Thomas impressed his tutors as a gifted, hardworking, and good-humored boy.
At the recommendation of St. Anthony's headmaster, Thomas was sent to serve as a page to the second-most-powerful man in England, Cardinal John Morton, the archbishop of Canterbury, at the archbishop's court, Lambeth Palace. It must have been a dazzling experience for a young boy, for only in the royal court was there greater splendor or more important activity; the old archbishop managed, on the king's behalf, and his own, to restrain the power of the feudal lords, who had made England in the past nearly impossible to govern. Morton was a wise and great statesman as well as a faithful prince of the Church. Thomas closely observed, admired, and learned from his master's genius for politics, which in those times was a dangerous profession, and his sincere priestly devotion. For his part, the archbishop felt great affection for his cheerful and precocious page, who he proclaimed would someday "prove to be a marvelous man."
He was so impressed by young Thomas's talents and character that he sponsored his education at Oxford University, where Thomas was a brilliant student. He loved learning, and would for the rest of his life prefer the less prestigious but more satisfying rewards of a scholar to the riches and power of the king's court. He began his studies at Oxford in the same year Columbus discovered the New World, and the Renaissance was flowering in Southern Europe. In England, the era of feudalism, when nobles ruled their lands with the power of life and death over the serfs who slaved for them, was approaching its end, and the influence of merchants, lawyers, and other prosperous commoners was on the rise.
More's father gave him only a small allowance while he was at Oxford so that he wouldn't have money to tempt him toward "dangerous and idle pastimes." Despite his poverty, Thomas couldn't have been happier. He thrived among his fellow scholars, who were making their presence felt in this period of historic change, as the dark and brutal Middle Ages began to give way to a more hopeful age of learning and reason.
He was part of a movement called humanism, whose followers were faithful to the Church but hoped to encourage a better understanding of the Gospels and their more honest application to the workings of society. They studied the great Greek and Roman philosophers, whose views on morality and just societies they believed complemented their Christian principles. They were passionate in pursuit of the truth as revealed by God, and by discovery through study and scholarly debate and discussion. They thought the world could be made gentler with Christian love and greater learning-love and learning that served not only the nobility of court and Church, but all mankind.
Thomas's father didn't approve of this new thinking, and after two years ordered him to leave Oxford and study law in his offices. Thomas obeyed his father's command, for he was an obedient man all his life, not without regret, but without complaint. He became a successful lawyer, even more so than his father. But he remained a dedicated scholar and a humanist also, and that calling would bring him more lasting and widespread fame than the high offices he would gain as an honest and admired man of law.
Thomas was a devout Christian, and for a time lived in a monastery with the intention of entering the priesthood. The monastic life was one of isolation and self-denial. And though he took his religious devotion seriously, he loved the comforts of family life, and the rewards of learning and earthly pleasures as well: music and art, reading and writing, friendship and conversation and jests. He loved his city, London, then the greatest capital of Northern Europe. He loved life. So he left the cloister for a wife and family, and returned to the worldly affairs of men.
His first wife, Jane, bore him three daughters and a son. It was a happy marriage, but brief. Jane died at the age of twenty-two. He knew his children needed a mother, and he a mistress to manage his household, so he quickly married again to a widow seven years his senior, Alice Middleton. It, too, was a happy marriage, marked by mutual affection and deep friendship. In an age when a man could legally beat his wife, with a "stick no wider than his thumb," he was a tender and respectful husband. Their large and comfortable home on the banks of the River Thames, in a part of London called Chelsea, then still countryside, was a warm, loving environment where his children thrived and he sought refuge from the increasing demands of his growing public life. It had a beautiful garden that opened to the river, and was filled with many different kinds of birds and animals, which fascinated him. There he supervised his children's education, although it was unusual for women of that time even to learn to read, and when they had grown, his home served as a school for his grandchildren. His love of learning and truth was second only to his love of God, and he encouraged his children, for the sake of their happiness, to seek truth through learning as well as scripture. Margaret, his oldest and favorite child, would become a woman of great learning, perhaps the most celebrated female scholar in all of Europe.
He was devoted to his children, and prized their company above all others. He engaged their minds with his great wit and skill in conversation, and by the example of his own serious scholarship. He wrote a book, Utopia, about an imaginary and idealized civilization that won him wide praise and international fame. He cultivated friendships, and exchanged letters with some of the greatest minds in Europe, including with the Dutch priest and famous humanist philosopher Erasmus, who became More's greatest admirer outside his family, and whose description of More became the title by which he is still remembered to this day: "a man for all seasons."
The Mores' house was often filled with guests, who were as often his poorer neighbors as the rich and powerful, and were attracted by the family's well-known hospitality, high spirits, and witty conversation. The young king himself, Henry VIII, who, although temperamental and selfish, admired learning and wit, visited often. Henry took great pleasure in the company of his honest, loyal, and amusing host, and valued not only his opinion and his service to the crown but his friendship.
Thomas More would have preferred never to leave his home if he could have secured the means to support his family without venturing outside it, and if he could have been spared the attentions and the needs of his king. But that was not to be.
His scholarly reputation and his reputation as a skillful and, more remarkable for those times, scrupulously honest lawyer first gained the attention of the king's most powerful counselor, the lord chancellor of England, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. An ambitious and shrewd politician, Wolsey recognized the younger man's talents, and pressed him into the king's service.
Serving first as a diplomat, then in a series of increasingly powerful offices at court, knighted, and given lands and wealth, More became a favorite of Wolsey's and Henry's. And while he might have preferred the life of a philosopher, husband, and father to the rigors of public life, he no doubt took pride in the king's confidence and favor. All the more so because the king and he, for much of that time, shared the same philosophical and religious views.
When Wolsey's downfall came, from the same source that would lead in time to Thomas's death, Henry made his friend lord chancellor. It was the highest office at court, and Thomas More was the first layman to hold it. His appointment was greeted favorably by the court and public alike, for Thomas was known by one and all as an honest man, who would conscientiously discharge the duties of his office.
As it turned out, he was too honest for his king. |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-11-16 00:00>
With the optimistic, confident delivery (occasionally peppered with a slightly precious, "for children" tone) familiar to viewers of Sunday morning political programs, Senator McCain serves up an admirable family recording with bipartisan appeal. Beginning with his own parents (a mother who is always eager to learn and "a stickler for good manners," and a father whose integrity shone in his dedication to military service, at one point a commander to his son in Vietnam), McCain profiles individuals who he feels exemplify attributes of good character. Thomas More was a great example of honesty; Ernest Shackleton exhibited loyalty, Victor Frankl dignity, and McCain himself clung to faith during his time as a prisoner of war. McCain's overriding message, that character is all about choices, and that one's character - not looks, abilities or possessions - determines one's happiness in life, is certainly an inspirational one that listeners from any political orientation can get behind. |
E.J. Dionne Jr. (Washington Post), USA
<2008-11-16 00:00>
It is hard to imagine any other politician writing this book: a series of morality tales pitched at America's youth, built around an eclectic collection of heroes who embody a not entirely predictable set of virtues. But John McCain is not just any politician.
In fact, you can make the case that the greatest success of the Republican senator from Arizona has not been as a politician but as a creator of his own public personality - as an existential hero and the author of inspirational books. Having previously penned Faith of My Fathers, Worth the Fighting For and Why Courage Matters, he has now created this surprisingly interesting collection with his longtime aide Mark Salter (who is generously acknowledged by McCain as his effective co-author and literary muse). This book is intended to inspire kids, but it will be of great interest to adults, including those trying to figure out how McCain might fare in the 2008 presidential election.
Those who have listened to and read McCain over the years - yes, I have long been part of that special-interest group that is correctly identified as his principal political base: journalists - eventually catch on to his moral style. It begins with self-deprecation. (In the introduction, McCain cites his mother's view that "fools' names and fools' faces are often seen in public places.") It then moves to a realistic and not particularly optimistic view of human nature. But it finally arrives at a heroic sense of human possibility. Everything depends on the capacity of human beings to will themselves to transcend their egos.
It's quite a trick for a politician who spends so much time drawing attention to himself to make this case, but McCain keeps pulling it off. He does so in part because his biography as a Vietnam War prisoner-of-war serves as his best character witness. Mostly, though, he makes it work by sharing his own anxieties. No politician has been more successful at selling himself by underselling himself.
"The most important thing I have learned, from my parents, from teachers, from my faith, from many good people I have been blessed to know, and from the lives of people whose stories we have included in this book," he writes, "is to want what they had, integrity, and to feel the sting of my conscience when I have risked it for some selfish reason."
The skeptic in me cries out at this sentence. McCain holds himself to the very highest standard, which ought to make him highly vulnerable to every charge of hypocrisy and phony high-mindedness you can think of. But notice that final clause. McCain knows perfectly well that he is far from perfect. He confesses that he, like everyone else, can be selfish. And then - the clincher - he lets you know that he struggles with such flaws because he has a conscience, one appliance many citizens figure that the run-of-the-mill politician never bothered to acquire. As a way of winning friends and influencing people, this is sheer genius.
The question is whether McCain is playing a game with us or whether the whole rap is real. What tilts me McCain's way -- though not without reasonable doubts - is that he seems to have a well-developed view of human nature. You might see him as a classic believer in original sin who also believes in transcendence and deliverance. That's why the McCain of this book made me think about my theological hero, Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote as powerfully as anyone in the 20th century about sin and salvation.
In summarizing for his readers the lessons they might take from these tales "for the important choices in your own life," McCain offers this view of the human condition: "We are born with one nature. We want what we want, and we want it now. But as we grow, we develop our second nature, our character. These stories are about that second nature." Call me corny, but I wouldn't mind if my kids learned to see life this way.
McCain's book is built around the lives of 34 people whose stories exemplify 34 virtues. Many of the virtues are obvious: honesty, courage, loyalty, responsibility, faith, tolerance, generosity and humility. Some are less obvious choices for a book of this sort: humor, curiosity, resilience, enthusiasm and authenticity.
That McCain really wants to run for president again is clear from his careful selection of heroes. He won't get into any trouble for the politicians he picks: Winston Churchill (for diligence), George Washington (for self-control), Abraham Lincoln (for resilience), Nelson Mandela (for forgiveness), Dwight D. Eisenhower (for humility) and Theodore Roosevelt (for enthusiasm).
He also won't be trashed for leaving out women or people of color. Their ranks include Mahatma Gandhi (for respect); Joan of Arc (for authenticity); Sojourner Truth (for idealism); Queen Elizabeth I (for confidence); Mother Antonia, the Beverly Hills debutante who became a nun working in a tough Mexican prison (for mercy); Oseola McCarty, who gave the $150,000 that she saved from a lifetime of doing others' laundry to the University of Southern Mississippi (for generosity); Martin Luther King Jr. (for fairness); the great Native American leader Tecumseh (for gratitude); the Olympic sprinter Wilma Rudolph (for excellence), and Mother Teresa (for selflessness and contentment). This is a book that works for boys and girls of many backgrounds. And as a political matter, it works across ideological, racial and ethnic divides - though a political consultant might have told McCain to include more Latinos.
And for a guy who got into a lot of fights with the religious right during his 2000 presidential campaign, there is ample praise of religious figures -- John Winthrop, of "a city upon a hill" fame, makes an appearance on behalf of "hopefulness" - and repeated references to McCain's own beliefs. His chapter on faith tells the story of a prison guard at the Vietnamese POW camp where McCain was held, who was a secret Christian. One Christmas morning, the guard, whose name McCain never even knew, came close to him and "very casually... used his foot to draw a cross in the dirt... I forgot about the war, and the terrible things that war does to you. I was just one Christian venerating the cross with a fellow Christian on a Christmas morning."
But those of McCain's supporters who are altogether secular will not be disappointed. He includes Charles Darwin - a gutsy pick these days - as a hero for representing curiosity and defends evolutionary theory against its critics. "The only undeniable challenge the theory of evolution poses to Christian beliefs is its obvious contradiction of the idea that God created the world as it is in less than a week," McCain writes. "But our faith is certainly not so weak that it can be shaken to learn that a biblical metaphor is not literal history. Nature doesn't threaten our faith." You'd like to hope this view would help him more than it hurts him in the 2008 GOP primaries.
McCain's volume might be seen as William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues with attitude - the maverick as moralist. His unlikely heroes also serve to make some of his most interesting points. He praises Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman-philosopher who went after "true believers." (Hoffer is here on behalf of "industry.") McCain admirably includes Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general who headed the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda - and tried and failed to get the rest of the world to pay attention to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Dallaire stands here for "righteousness." It's good that McCain uses his chapter on "courtesy" to praise Aung San Suu Kyi, the extraordinary Burmese human rights hero, and to go after Burma's dictators.
Still, you get a sense at the end of these stories that, for all his talk about love and for all his belief in the human capacity for transcendence, McCain does not have a rosy view of life. Over and over, he refers to the fears, anxieties and darker impulses in his heroes. He notes that Lincoln was "a melancholy man" who suffered from "chronic depression." In Churchill's case, McCain points to "the recurring bouts of serious depression he suffered all of his life, and which he could only chase away with ceaseless activity." In writing about Edith Cavell, the World War I nurse heroine executed by the Germans for harboring Allied troops and getting them to safety, McCain speaks about her father's lack of "warmth and humor" and the reputation she developed for "aloofness and severity."
McCain's openly expressed understanding of life's harsher side - he repeatedly praises Lincoln for "ruthlessly prosecuting" the Civil War - makes him an atypical politician. We Americans (and I'm no exception) tend to prefer sunny optimists. But this uncompromising realism may also be the primary source of McCain's appeal.
His chapter on dignity highlights the life of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian Jewish Holocaust survivor who played an important part in McCain's earlier book on his survival in the POW camps. After World War II, Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning, which seems to provide the underpinning of much of what McCain believes. Frankl insisted that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
That is the central theme of this book. And if it turns out to be the theme of McCain's political career - if his conscience really does have the capacity to be stung - he will be remembered in a volume like this some day, whether he becomes president or not.
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Stephen Pletko (MSL quote), Canada
<2008-11-16 00:00>
This book, by American Senator John McCain and his administrative assistant Mark Salter, does exactly what the quotation that titles this review says: it gives us the true examples or stories of remarkable people of exceptionally good character. (Character is "what you are in your essence, the sum total of your habits, your personal assortment of virtues [or goods] and vices [or bads].") McCain elaborates:
"The individuals whose stories we tell were chosen because they had a special quality, a particular strength of character that made their lives and their world better. They chose to live their lives in ways that we admire because they believed their principles were their most important possessions. Not their looks or their abilities, not their comfort or pleasure, nor their job or house or car or toys or how many friends they had or how much money they made. They were true to themselves, and were not false to anyone... [The individuals profiled in this book] did not submit to an inevitable destiny... I do not believe in destiny. I believe in character. So I leave you with thirty-four stories [about 25 men and 9 women] of character, with the hope that they will entertain and inspire you as much as they have me."
(By the way, the quotation that titles this review was uttered by philosopher, theologian, physician, musician, and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer just hours before his death. In fact, the title of this book "Character is Destiny" is an actual quotation said by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Neither Schweitzer nor Heraclitus is profiled in this book.)
Each part of this book is titled by a general value. For example, part one is titled with the general value HONOR. Each value has specific character traits that make up that general value. For example, for the value HONOR, these specific character traits are mentioned: (Honesty, Respect, Authenticity, Loyalty, Dignity). Then, the true story of a person who exemplifies a particular character trait is told.
Here is the complete set of general VALUES and their (specific character traits) for each part:
(1) HONOR: (Five character traits indicated above)
(2) PURPOSE: (Idealism, Righteousness, Citizenship, Diligence, Responsibility, Cooperation)
(3) STRENGTH: (Courage, Self-control, Confidence, Resilience, Industry, Hopefulness)
(4) UNDERSTANDING: (Faith, Compassion, Mercy, Tolerance, Forgiveness, Generosity)
(5) JUDGEMENT: (Fairness, Humility, Gratitude, Humor, Courtesy)
(6) CREATIVITY: (Aspiration, Discernment, Curiosity, Enthusiasm, Excellence)
(7) LOVE: Selfishness and Contentment
Each story of a person who exemplifies a particular character trait is well told. Each story begins with a brief summary about the person. For example, the person profiled under diligence has this introductory summary written about him:
"He persevered through every trial and misfortune to alert his countrymen to the approaching danger, and to save them when they ignored his warning."
Another example under courtesy:
"She was the Burmese wife of an Oxford don who came home to free her people, and oppose the tyrants who jailed her with courage and decency."
Each part has a cover page that includes an impressive drawn portrait of each person who is to be profiled for that part. Also included on the cover page is an insightful quotation from a William Shakespeare play. (McCain is a Shakespeare admirer like I am.) For example, the quotation for the JUDGMENT cover page is:
"The fellow's wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well craves a kind of wit." (From the 1600 Shakespearean comedy play entitled "Twelfth Night.")
The only problem I had with this book concerns the portraits of the people profiled. True, the portraits are well drawn. Unfortunately, they are not named. For example, the STRENGTH cover page has six portraits. Who's who? In my case, I knew some of the faces portrayed on this page. But some I did not. Younger readers especially may find it frustrating trying to attach a name to a particular portrait.
Finally, besides this book, I recommend a 1998 book that has the same title as this one and is authored by Professor Russell Gough. It is from this book that I found the Schweitzer quotation that titles this review, learned that the phrase "Character is destiny" was, as I said above, first uttered by Heraclitus, and where I obtained the above definition for the word "character."
In conclusion, this book contains thirty-four scintillating true stories about extraordinary character that definitely inspired me! |
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