Every year, thousands of high school and college commencement speakers deliver ringing homilies about climbing the ladder of personal success. At Massachusetts's Wellesley High School, David McCullough, Jr., delivered a graduation message so different from such moral uplift that it soon became a viral sensation. This mild-mannered high school teacher made a sensation by suggesting that graduates seek involvement with life, not grasp after corporate success or stardom. For many parents and graduates, this tough love talk struck a chord of deep agreement. (P.S. McCullough is the son of famed historian David McCullough.)
Every once in a long while, a voice seems to come out of nowhere, and you wonder how you ever managed without [it]. David McCullough, Jr. has that startling, insightful, wry, reassuring, helpful voice and You Are Not Special may be the wisest ‘parenting’ book I’ve read in decades.
A clear-eyed but affectionate polemic urging kids to stop trying to be perfect and to take chances, even at the risk of failing. A profound celebration of the life well lived.
…to open You Are Not Special…and Other Encouragements is to enter a deeply intellectual and thought-out analysis of the forces that shape modern teenage life, both at home and in the classroom. . . Even if you didn’t agree with McCullough’s speech, this is essential reading.
…a success. May its salvos ring from Cambridge and Arlington to the hinterlands of Wellesley, Weston, and Way-wayland. You Are Not Special is also big-hearted - and clearly forged in a hearth of caring, doubt, and fear. Aphorisms could be lifted from every page and blossom into memes.
Drawing on his teaching and parenting experience, You Are Not Special calls on teenagers to use their privilege and considerable talents to solve the increasingly complex and dire problems plaguing our world... It’s a lovely notion… and the book is fantastic.
Despite the somewhat disparaging tone of the title, McCullough’s graduation book is anything but a downer. The high school English teacher ...expands on his viral commencement address with words of encouragement: Do what you love, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and remember-we’re all in the same boat.
10/10/2014
The genesis of this book was McCullough's 2012 commencement address to a high school class, which was recorded (ow.ly/CsQ1h) and went viral. The essential message of both this book and that speech concerns austerity and realism—your life so far may have taught you that success is easy, but it doesn't really work that way. While this exceedingly well-written book draws on a massive vocabulary and deep knowledge of literature, much of the first third is cranky, even discouraging. The occasional wisdom of the rest is often buried under rambling exposition and abandoned tangents. While the book's conversational tone translates quite well to audio format, and McCullough's narration is erudite and even-toned, the author is too taken with his own writing to be effective.
Verdict Only the most dedicated listeners will slog through the full eight hours.—Douglas C. Lord, New Britain P.L., CT
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★ 2014-03-12
The cult of exceptionalism, like celebrity worship, is draining us of our humanity and joy, suggests high school teacher McCullough, whose expertise comes from having nearly three decades of teaching experience and four children of his own. The author, son of the acclaimed historian, moves through the world with his eyes open, willingly empathetic to those deserving and dedicated to doing the right thing in all cases. In this book, an expansion of a 2012 commencement speech, he writes with crisp precision and light humor ("this was before Al Gore invented the Internet"). McCullough discusses the importance of authority figures' butting out, letting kids govern their engagement with life and learn through trial and error. As he notes, we all fail, but we must get up and get back into the scrum, not allowing our expectations to cripple us. "Parents, you see, are people, subject to self-doubt, who don't always have every answer, who are doing the best they can," he writes. "And we are only as happy, generally, as our least happy child, only as successful as our least successful child." McCullough ably conveys his genuine love of teaching, as well as its ups and downs, and demonstrates the significance of encouraging independence and the impulse to explore and take risks and discover those things that touch you deeply. He also digs into the perils of technology, "the breathless infatuation with hi-def, 3D, 5G, glued to the hand, glued to the ear, twenty-first-century cyber gee-whizzery." The author tackles big issues, such as gender and race, with searching sincerity, open-heartedness, and a deft, light touch. "I like to imagine," he writes, "[parents and teenagers] putting [this book] down…and reaching for another book, then maybe another, and, before long, getting up, heading out, taking great happy lungfuls of air, eager to do some good." Neither sage nor curmudgeon, McCullough is a thoughtful pre-Socratic without a schadenfreude-soaked bone in his body.
