Chasing the Socratic Dream - Softcover

For decades, Dan Yankelovich has been a trusted observer of our nation and a tracker of social and moral trends. In this book, he blends the story of his own quest for a meaningful life with a compelling narrative of the turmoil and constant social change in the nation. Any reader who is interested in exploring how to live well in this modern world will find this book irresistible. His beloved mother died when he was eight years old in the depths of the Great Depression. The decade of foster homes that followed taught him how to cope with adversity. He applied his experience to the service of the Socratic dream: how to live a good and examined life. Growing up, Dan worked after school in candy shops and burlesque houses. He attended Harvard on a paper boys’ scholarship; served as a combat engineer in the Battle of the Bulge; came back and completed his undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard; ran off to Paris for three years, and wound up in Manhattan, creating a research firm in his own name. He advised Presidents and other world leaders, and wrote books many of us were assigned in college. But above all, he sought to hammer out his own philosophy of life, as Socrates advised. His quest yields this sort of advice: · Do not fight being an outsider. Relish it! · Accept that you are less rational than you think you are. · Rank intellectual honesty high among your core values. · Don’t skip any of life’s stages, even if you do them out of sequence. · Never give up seeking unconditional love. This is a special kind of memoir, one for which Socrates himself might have written the blurb.