Have a Little Faith is the first book that showed up in my mailbox without knowledge it was coming. I have read every Albom book and his books hold a special place in my family. My son has read Tuesday’s with Morrie about 50 times! He was reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven on a family vacation which sparked a conversation with Mike Tyson (along with an autograph). I was excited to receive an ARC copy, thank you to the individual who sent this to me.
From the author’s website: Mitch Albom is an internationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have collectively sold over 28 million copies worldwide; have been published in forty-one territories and in forty-two languages around the world; and have been made into Emmy Award-winning and critically-acclaimed television movies.
Tuesdays with Morrie is the chronicle of Mitch’s time spent with his beloved professor. As a labor of love, Mitch wrote the book to help pay Morrie’s medical bills. It spent four years on the New York Times Bestseller list and is now the most successful memoir ever published. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, is the most successful US hardcover first adult novel ever. For One More Day, his most recent, debuted at No.1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and spent nine months on the list. In October 2006, For One More Day was the first book chosen by Starbucks in the newly launched Book Break Program, which also helped fight illiteracy by donating one dollar from every book sold to Jumpstart.
Albom profiles two people in this book: a rabbi who he has been asked to write a eulogy for and an inner-city convict turned pastor. The Rabbi and Pastor’s journeys to faith couldn’t be more different yet it’s the one thing that keeps them grounded. The change we see in one of the main characters in the book is something that we rarely see in this world.
I look forward to reading all of his books, Tuesday’s with Morrie might still be my favorite, but I also loved Five People you meet in Heaven. Have a Little Faith is a wonderful story, it reminds us to focus on what is important.
From the author’s website: Mitch Albom is an internationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have collectively sold over 28 million copies worldwide; have been published in forty-one territories and in forty-two languages around the world; and have been made into Emmy Award-winning and critically-acclaimed television movies.
Tuesdays with Morrie is the chronicle of Mitch’s time spent with his beloved professor. As a labor of love, Mitch wrote the book to help pay Morrie’s medical bills. It spent four years on the New York Times Bestseller list and is now the most successful memoir ever published. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, is the most successful US hardcover first adult novel ever. For One More Day, his most recent, debuted at No.1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and spent nine months on the list. In October 2006, For One More Day was the first book chosen by Starbucks in the newly launched Book Break Program, which also helped fight illiteracy by donating one dollar from every book sold to Jumpstart.
Albom profiles two people in this book: a rabbi who he has been asked to write a eulogy for and an inner-city convict turned pastor. The Rabbi and Pastor’s journeys to faith couldn’t be more different yet it’s the one thing that keeps them grounded. The change we see in one of the main characters in the book is something that we rarely see in this world.
I look forward to reading all of his books, Tuesday’s with Morrie might still be my favorite, but I also loved Five People you meet in Heaven. Have a Little Faith is a wonderful story, it reminds us to focus on what is important.
Type: Inspirational, 272 pages, Hardcover
Synopsis:
What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together?
In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight year journey between two worlds – two men, two faiths, two communities – that will inspire readers everywhere.
Albom’s first nonfiction book since Tuesdays with Morrie was published twelve years ago, Have A Little Faith begins with an unusual request: an 82-year-old rabbi from Albom’s old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy.
Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he’d left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor – a reformed drug dealer and convict – who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.
Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Mitch observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi, embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat.
As America struggles with hard times and people turn more to their beliefs, Mitch and the two men of God explore issues that perplex modern man: how to endure when difficult things happen; what heaven is; intermarriage; forgiveness; doubting God; and the importance of faith in trying times. Although the texts, prayers and histories are different, Albom begins to realize a striking unity between the two worlds - and indeed, between beliefs everywhere.
In the end, as the rabbi nears death and a harsh winter threatens the pastor’s wobbly church, Albom sadly fulfills the last request and writes the eulogy. And he finally understands what both men had been teaching all along: the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself.
Have a Little Faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man’s journey, but it is everyone’s story.