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

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 432 pages
• Published by: Basic Books August 17, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0465041663
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0465041664
• Book Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
In this uneven collection, Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, gathers together over sixty poems, memoirs and essays tailored to buck up the spirits of a left-liberal audience depressed by the sorry state of the world. Although generally in favor of justice and democracy and against the "runaway global market," the selection of writers includes a wide range of environmentalists, civil rights crusaders, anti-poverty activists and dissidents against both fascism and communism. From these eclectic offerings some hopeful, albeit familiar themes assert themselves: ordinary people can make a difference, every little bit counts, in solidarity there is strength, a positive attitude is half the battle, the powers that be are unexpectedly vulnerable, and history is full of surprising victories of the weak over the strong. Not surprisingly, many of the pieces amount to motivational lectures, while others inflate the notion of hope into tiresome dilations on, for example, the links between information processing, daydreams and butterflies. But the articles that deal with concrete struggles and achievements—Nelson Mandela’s memoir of imprisonment on Robben Island, Vaclav Havel’s account of the ant-like construction of civil society and a dissident political culture in Communist Czechoslovakia, Bill McKibben’s homage to the urban planning triumphs of Curitiba, Brazil—deliver real inspiration.
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Product Review
"A shot in the arm for all of us who feel withered by crisis and paralyzed with cynicism." -- Aretha Williams, San Antonio Express News, Sept 12 2005

"A stirring collection of essays aimed at people who still want to believe that ordinary people can change the world." -- Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 30, 2004

"An anthology of some of the most powerful voices of our time." -- Boston Globe, Oct 3 2004

"An indispensable anthology of hope. Put away your Prozac, and pick up The Impossible Will Take a Little While." -- Arianna Huffington

"Deeply moving and motivating a retinue to be reckoned with from those dedicated to the concept of a better world" -- Baltimore Sun, Jan 2, 2005

"Hopeful, inspiring, and motivating May well be required reading for us all." -- Sierra Club magazine, December 2004

"Paul Loeb brings hope for a better world in a time when we so urgently need it." -- Millard Fuller, founder, Habitat for Humanity

"This book can even make one hopeful about the future despite so many signs to the contrary." -- Bill Moyers

"This might possibly be the most important collection of stories and essays you will ever read." -- History Channel top-10 2004 political book list, November 2004

"Will resonate with anyone struggling with despair and doubt." -- Dallas Morning News, Nov. 30, 2004

Reader Reviews
Edited twenty 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