by Drew Coffey     March/April 2008  

 

Quite simply: Why hope? Faith without hope is the little pig’s house made of straw, and charity without hope is fatalism. Hope without faith begs for disappointment, and faith joined to hope without charity is just a fatter IRA than anyone else on the block has. So, although the three sing best in harmony, let’s ask hope to come up to the microphone for … a solo with backup.

 

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

William Faulkner, Nobel banquet, Stockholm, Dec. 10, 1950

 

 

 

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts

 

Harper Perennial, 2005. The wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers who have only in the past few decades begun to receive the attention they deserve. Their faith in the new republic and their hope for a voice, at whatever volume, provide us — men and women alike — with role models we have too long ignored. (And there are some lovely villains.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope and Despair: How Perceptions of the Future Shape Human Behavior

by Anthony Reading

 

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. The word “academic” should be restricted to books one is under an obligation to read, for whatever reason. This may not be a likely candidate as a daytime talk show host’s choice for America’s bedside tables, but Dr. Reading has written a fascinating, not to say riveting, analysis of how we are able, using our imagination, to construct alternate versions of the past, present, and future in order to function. “Hope” may be a combination of selective memory, unrealistic expectations, and a chessboard present where we manipulate the pieces in order to avoid checkmate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

 

50th Anniversary Edition, Harper Perennial, 2006 (original publication 1956). Pace questions of primary authorship, here is an undisputed American classic: a study of eight patriots, over a period of almost 200 years, whose belief in themselves and the American system of government is a testament to the hope of the founding fathers that a country’s citizenry could be trusted with its own governance. A moving bonus is Dan Ponder, Jr.’s extraordinary speech in support of hate-crime legislation in Georgia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

 

Bantam, 2007. Is it possible to feel disappointed at having missed the Great Depression? This is a book an anthropologist would save from a fire in the library. Kalish and her extended family couldn’t be starved out, frozen out, or scorched out of their deep belief in their own worth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

 

B.M. Moovaart translator, Bantam, 1993. What is a diary if not a trust, a hope that someone is listening, that the diarist’s feelings and experience and perceptions mean something? Most of us are incapable of wrapping our minds around the sheer magnitude of the Holocaust, but no one is so lost as to hope we would ever again turn our backs and let an Anne Frank be taken away. If we give up on Darfur or Nairobi or on ourselves, then our hope is less than hers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope: How Triumphant Leaders Create the Future by Andrew Razeghi

 

Jossey-Bass, 2006. It’s hard not to love a book that draws on both Deepak Chopra and Charles Schwab to make its points. Although this volume may not be heavy on original thinking, it is a strong reminder that preparedness is the coat that hopeful leaders wear going out the door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 by Jay Winik,

 

Harper, 2007. Brilliantly connecting the histories of the newborn United States, revolutionary France, and imperial Russia, Winik shows how democracy and revolution swept the world during an era when tens of millions began to believe, perhaps for the first time, that hope for equality and dignity could be achieved in this world rather than deferred to the hereafter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

 

HarperCollins, 2005. “Once there was a tree… and she loved a little boy.” A profound and ambiguous story of selfishness and sacrifice, but also a fable that lets us hope… that when we have nothing left to give and desire has been exhausted, the one we loved may return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön

 

Shambhala Publications, 2005. Guess what? Even if you’ve convinced yourself that your life is a warm, touching dramedy scripted by professionals at a major network — the writers are on strike and you’re on your own. Rational or irrational fear and even hopelessness are part and parcel of the human condition, but bend over the edge of the trunk, Pandora, Hope is crouched there in the corner, waiting for you to lift it and feel its beating heart.

 

 

 

 

 

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

 

Scribner, 2007 (original publication 1936). Briefly: The heroine loses the man she loves, war breaks out, her first husband dies, she is thrown into abject poverty, she steals her sister’s fiancé and marries him, he dies, or does Atlanta burn first… or the tragic accident with the child and the horse… or the dead mother and the insane father? And Scarlett’s conclusion, after 10 years that would have put Lincoln in the attic of the White House with a bottle of brandy is, “Tomorrow is another day.” I guess. Professor Reading could essentially have done his whole book on hope using just Scarlett O’Hara.