The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links to more recent books along these lines.

My title page, where I put my summary notes, is covered with writing. The first and most important point: this is not a "do gooder feel good" book--it is a compelling, absorbing book that lays out some good insights and provides an antidote to paralysis and dispair. It is, in short, a book that inspires many small actions that in the aggregate could lead to revolutionary improvements in democracy and our quality of life.

It took a lot of work to put this book together, including getting all the copyright permissions, and if I had one complaint, it is that I have already read many of these older items (e.g. Mandela, Havel, Martin Luther King) and it was too difficult to find the original pieces commissioned just for this book. Having said that--as a 52 year old that reads a great deal--I would quickly say that if you want to introduce younger people to great thinkers in the democratic tradition, it would be hard to do better than this book as a "reader."

The book is also complemented by the online aids for further study and for reading group discussion.

I thought of my teen-ager as I read the book, and wrote his name in several places on the margin--this book is relevant to parents dealing with very smart young people who may tend to say "I'm never having children" because the world is going to hell.

At a tactical level, this book complements Bill Moyer's "Doing Democracy," and is a personal counterpart to Jonathan Schell's work, "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People."

I put the book down with one big thought ably communicated by this book: The problem among us is not that we lack power, but that we lack the will and perspective to use the power that we do have in small ways that add up to big power in the aggregate.

See also, with reviews:
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen

It's unusual for me, a busy person, to read a book from cover to cover, particularly one with chapters and topics like this one. But reading The Impossible Will Take a Little While is a little like eating good chocolates. You can't stop with just one essay. I'm so moved by it that I'm buying copies for my church group to discuss. Bravo and a hearty thanks to Paul Loeb. The world still has good people who provide inspiration and hope, and he's one of them.

REV. MARIE JONES of BookIdeas.com writes:
With all the despair, fear and overwhelming anxiety today's citizens live with, who has the time, energy or courage to try to make a real difference in the world? Author Paul Rogat Loeb, who changed lives and empowered hearts with his first book, "Soul of a Citizen," returns with a truckload of fresh, new hope in his follow-up, "The Impossible Will Take A Little While." This inspiring and motivating collection of essays by people who did indeed find the time, energy and courage to make a difference in the world will have your heart and spirit soaring, even as the world around us threatens to become even more dark and violent and unforgiving.


Featuring powerful essays from the likes of Marian Wright Edelman, Desmond Tutu, Jim Hightower, Susan Griffin, Arundhati Roy, Alice Walker, Jim Wallis, Howard Zinn and so many others, this book serves as a spiritual guidebook on activism and working for change in a world that often resists positive change with negative force. These people, and many others far less famous or well-known, provide the reader with countless ways of making a difference and doing good in their communities, even via small acts of kindness which often result in huge ripples of change, often years down the road.

This book is filled with hope, the kind of energizing hope needed by citizens who long to find something good to hold onto as they question their ability to change the world and make it a better place for their children and grandchildren. The kind of hope that spurs action, even the smallest action, knowing that the end result may never come, but that acting is still the right and moral thing to do. This non-partisan book should be read by every single man and woman in Congress and by every member of every Presidential administration, as well as by every public citizen, for it is ultimately about the amazing and wonderful good that can come when we open our hearts and act like the humans God created us to be.

I interviewed Paul Loeb on this book for local radio station WERU-FM. Not only did the book engage me so, that I read it cover to cover - I found myself getting even more committed to doing whatever I can to change our country's course for the better.

I recommend this book highly to anyone seeking a respite from the media circus and the heavy pall of despair and cynicism that seems to have settled over our land since 9/11.

If you're wondering, "What difference can I make in the world, just one person, insignificant as I am," please read this book. You can, I can, and together we can change our world for the better.

Bela Johnson, Medical Intuitive
http://www.belajohnson.com

Host, Alternative Currents
http://www.weru.org

There are so many crises in the world, it's tempting to put our heads under the covers and give up. This is a book that got my spirit going again. In a time when so much seems to be run for short-sighted advantage, this book can help us go for the long haul.

It includes powerful essays by world-renowned writers, including famous activists such as Nelson Mandela, who describes surviving 27 years in prison. But I was also really moved by some people I'd never heard of. There's a wonderful woman named Danusha Goska who writes about responding to someone who says they feel politically paralyzed by talking about her own intermittent physical paralysis and what she's still able to do. She then goes on to talk about how we've come to confuse virtue and celebrity in a way that demeans all the more humble efforts in which any of us are actually likely to participate. I work with the Chicago Recycling Coalition, and this rang so true with my experience.

The book is a wonderful mix of memoirs, essays, stories and poems to help keep us going in the difficult task of working for a better world. I've already thought of people I'll be giving it to as gifts.