Mitch Albom's Blog
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My new book, Have a Little Faith
Dear Friends,
Writing a new book is always a big deal for me. I don’t do it that often. And because you have been kind to me in the past, reading my work or interacting through my website, I am proud and happy to share with you the first look at my upcoming book, HAVE A LITTLE FAITH. You can watch an exclusive video in which I read the first pages by heading to my website, www.mitchalbom.com.
Let me tell you a bit about it.
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH is the non-fiction follow-up to Tuesdays with Morrie – my first non-fiction book in 12 years. And it is, in my view, the most important thing I’ve ever written.
It begins with a dying request. A wise and aged man of God asks for a eulogy.
And he asks me.
Naturally, I am stunned. Who am I to send him off to heaven? I’d been raised with faith but drifted away when I got busy with life.
His request, which I hesitatingly agree to honor, plunges me back into the world of belief—two worlds, to be exact. One is his—my old world, my old congregation, in my old hometown—a suburban, middle-class temple in southern New Jersey.
The second world is a poor, inner-city church in downtown Detroit—where I live now—with a huge hole in its roof where rain and snow fall in, often on the homeless people who make it their sanctuary. It is run by a former convict turned pastor, who battles to keep its doors open.
These two places, these two different men, are the floor¬boards of Have a Little Faith. A pastor and rabbi, one black, one white, one poor, one comfortable, one Christian, one Jew, both trying to inspire their followers against the odds.
As the rabbi nears his death, as the pastor faces the collapse of his decaying church, I am drawn by how similar their lives actually are. I see the comfort belief gives them.
And as I craft the farewell words of the eulogy, I find that beneath all our arguing and prejudices, faith truly is universal—a human desire to believe in something bigger.
Here is why this book is, to me, important. We live at a time when many things feel threatened—our jobs, our security, our future. We also live at a time when science and technology can do so much, you wonder why we need religion at all.
Yet we turn to faith more and more. Why? That journey is the soul of the book, one I hope will be embraced by many read¬ers with the same question.
I invite you to be among the first to share this story. If you head to my website, you’ll find more information, including an exclusive video in which I read the first pages. I’ll also be releasing excerpts in the coming months. I hope that you’ll share your thoughts about HAVE A LITTLE FAITH on www.MitchAlbom.com.
And I thank you, as always, for all you have done for my books.
Warmly,
Mitch Albom -
Greetings from the Olympics!
Hi, Mitch Albom here.
I'm writing to you from
Beijing, where I'm covering the 2008 Summer Olympics for my column at the Detroit Free Press. I am so grateful to have this chance to be here and wanted to share this journey with you. China is a fascinating place, and I've had a lot of little adventures already—enlightening, funny, sad. I'll be posting my columns on my website, www.mitchalbom.com, and when I can, some pictures, too. There'll be a good deal about sports—it is the Olympics - but many will be about my experiences in a place I've never been and perhaps you haven't either. I hope that you'll read them and, as you watch the Games back home, feel like we're on this trip together. I've included here the first column I wrote when I got to Beijing. I'm also excited to share this because it is a small piece of what will be available on my website in the coming months. I've been working for some time now to revamp www.mitchalbom.com to be a real home for a community of readers and fans that are so important to me. You've shared so much over the years and given me the chance to open up to you about my life and work, and my new site will be the place for us to come together and share our stories and opportunities to give back. It will also be a place to access my books, columns, radio and TV work and even personal adventures in a way that will keep us always talking and ever growing. I'll be sure to send more when it's up.
Thanks for reading and, as always, for your support.
Warm regards,Mitch Albom
Why make this Olympic journey?
BEIJING — Because it's China. Because I've never been here.
Because you can't have a conversation inAmerica without someone saying, "In a few years, the Chinese will take over everything."
Because there is a Starbucks at the airport but armed guards on highway overpasses.
Because there is no bigger country undergoing a bigger change anywhere on the planet.
Because this is the culture that invented paper, the compass and gunpowder.
Because exactly 100 years ago, it ushered in its last emperor, who was 2 years old.
Because I still remember Nixon's trip.
Because when I was in grade school, this place was crushing freedom with its Cultural Revolution.
Because when I was already out of college, this place was meeting college students with tanks inTiananmen Square.
BecauseChina is rich and powerful enough to be buying up America's debt, yet narrow-minded enough to think it can censor the Internet.
Because people here who do what I do can end up in jail.
Because of the Great Wall.
Because of theForbidden City.
Because of Taoism, Genghis Khan, the Ming Dynasty and Mao Tse-tung.
Because it's historic.
The mystery ofChina
Because my first Summer Olympics, in 1984, were also the first Summer Olympics forChina in more than a quarter century.
Because today, less than a quarter century later,China stands to win the most medals.
Because, like 1936Berlin or 1980 Moscow, these Games will be a glimpse inside a powerful, repressive, cloistered society that can't resist pluming its feathers for the world.
Because I want to see whether they are, as some alarmists claim, the enemy.
Because I want to show them, in my own small way, that we are not.
Because of this number: 1.3 billion.
Because if you took out all the people who had finally reached middle-class status, you'd still have a billion who hadn't.
The spirit of competition
Because it's the Olympics.
Because I want to see whether Michael Phelps can do it.
Because I want to see whether Dara Torres can do it.
Because the Games indeed have grown bloated and corrupt, but the magnifying glass for that is watching on TV; in person, the Games always look different, smaller, more personal, better.
Because I want to witness how Yao Ming is treated in his house.
Because if you diss and dismiss the Games by saying, "Everyone's on drugs," then the drug users win. And there are still enough honest athletes who don't deserve that.
Because I want to see whether LeBron,Kobe, Wade and Prince can do it.
Because the idea of the Olympics is still the best idea in the world of sports.
Because it still matters.
Because the older I get, the more I want to see something I didn't expect — something that can jolt or delight in a new way.
And because you get that feeling when you see the athletic world marching into a stadium together, holding up flags and waving.
All of this is my answer to the question I have been asked over and over during the last few weeks: "Why are you bothering to go toChina?"
Because I'm lucky enough to get the chance.
Let's see what we can find out together. -
Read the speech I delivered to my nephew’s graduating class on Amazon’s Kindle
Hi, Mitch Albom here. I wanted to alert you to something new, something I've never tried before. Amazon.com is now offering an exclusive online digital print version of a commencement speech I recently gave that was a personal highlight for me. My nephew – and I remember being in the hospital the day he was born – had asked me to come to his high school and speak to his graduating class. Of course, he lives in France, in a small town just outside of Nice. I'm not sure I know what to say to high schoolers down the block, let alone half a world away.
But since I love my nephew (for some reason, he looks more like me than any child of mine ever could) I couldn't help but say yes. I wrote the speech on the plane ride over, and I wrote it not about my interests or current events but about what he and other young people can expect from the world, what I once expected from it, what we all learn as we go along about life that is inevitable and funny and sad and enlightening and heartbreaking and wonderful.
Anyhow, I gave the talk, and as a bonus, I got to hand my nephew his diploma! It was one of those special moments where the stars seem to align, and afterwards many people asked if they could get a copy of the speech. I wrote a column about the experience and even more people asked about getting a copy of the speech.
Thus, I have agreed, for the first time, to publish something through the web only, and this magazine-length talk is now available through Amazon on their Kindle readers for .99 cents, of which all of my proceeds will be given to a charity, S.A.Y. Detroit, to help the homeless. It's a way of sharing a special moments I had with you, my most important readers, and doing some good for other people at the same time.
I hope you get a chance to check it out. I'm linking here for you, because you have, in the past, been kind enough to read my books, a copy of the column I wrote about giving this speech, which will give you a better idea about the whole thing.
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy this new little foray of mine. And for the many of you who ask, yes, I am at work on another book, aiming for publication next year, and yes, For One More Day is finally out in paperback, and the Oprah Winfrey-produced movie is now available on DVD.
Have a great rest of the summer.
Your friend,
Mitch
Read the article I wrote about giving the speech for the Detroit Free Press on my website, MitchAlbom.com
Here's a link to Amazon's Kindle Store, Mitch Albom Amazon Exclusive
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A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Votes
Detroit Free Press, Sunday, June 22, 2008:
With all the problems facing this country, the issue of "who sits where" shouldn't rank very high.
But last week it did, after two Muslim women were denied seats behind Barack Obama at his rally at Joe Louis Arena, seats that would have placed them in full view of the TV cameras broadcasting his speech.
The women were moved away, they said, because they each wore a hijab, the traditional Muslim head scarf. That image, volunteers told them, was politically sensitive for Obama.
And so the women were moved. And they complained. And it became a big story. And they demanded an apology. And the campaign apologized. But they demanded a personal apology from the candidate.
And so Obama, who seems to suffer the unique affliction of too many people wanting to support him -- Muslims, Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- called and offered apologies from his own mouth.
All because of two scarves.
You'd like to say this kind of thing would never have happened with Abe Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, and you'd be right -- but not because they were finer candidates than Obama. Rather because they didn't have to deal with television.
Today, image is everything. B-roll is everything. Think how many times you saw Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky, an image used to drive home his inappropriate relationship with her. Think how many times you saw that photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983, and how it was used to dilute Rumsfeld's case against the dictator.
You can say it shouldn't matter. But in a nation where we would rather make up our minds off a quick glimpse, "Who's in the picture?" makes a big difference.
Manipulating the media
Personally, I was not surprised those women were asked to move -- I'm just surprised the askers were honest about it. Politicians have been manipulating photos since the first tray of developer was tilted. Do you really think candidates love kissing babies? Do you really think JFK regularly played football on the beach? Do you really think George W. Bush lands on aircraft carriers wearing a bomber jacket?
This business of molding the image is as old as TV itself and has become more significant in the age of high-def. Whatever demographic a politician is trying to appeal to, you can bet that demographic will be represented in the frame.
What I'd like to know is, who gave the Obama volunteers their instructions to move the Muslim women? That seems an awfully bold decision for a couple of campaign workers to make on their own, doesn't it?
As of publication, no one has come forth and admitted giving the orders. The volunteers are being blamed for their own poor judgment. Maybe that's the truth. Or maybe they're being sacrificed to keep fingers from pointing closer to Obama.
Images of old ignorance
In any case, someone in Obama's world is to blame for insensitivity here. But others are at fault as well. Namely, those who would have used those images had the women been seated. There are people out there who want nothing more than to paint Obama as some terrorist sympathizer, who point to his middle name -- Hussein -- and hiss it through clenched teeth.
These are people who likely would have used such an image in a subtly negative way, maybe some TV campaign, tight on Obama and the hijab-clad women, with a suggestive voice underneath ("When Obama speaks, who's really listening?").
The fact is, there is a knee-jerk distrust of Islam in America today that has a parallel in the anti-Japanese fervor of World War II or the anti-Communism fever during the 1950s. That kind of fear sparks foolish and regrettable history. There are plenty in this country who would see those two Muslim women behind Obama and tell themselves, "If those people are for him, I'm against him."
And that's a shame. If Obama is smart, he will try to frame this as "Hey, if my biggest problem is all types of people want to support me, I'm not doing badly." Whether others will buy it is another story. As always, it depends who is in the picture, and who is looking at it.