In this book on shaping a meaningful and ethical life, the renowned, Pulitzer Prize–winning author explores how character, courage, and human and moral understanding can be fostered by reflecting on the lives of others, through stories. Based on Robert Coles’ legendary course at Harvard, this provocative book addresses such questions as, “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” It calls on us to become stronger and more aware, by reflecting on ourselves and others with the help of great literature and art. Dr. Coles shows how the work of writers, artists, and thinkers of the past two centuries can inspire our own reflections on the daily lives we lead. He offers a compelling call to venture outside of our own selves and lives and to listen, attentively and with growing humanity, to the way others get through life. Coles encourages us to examine our own character, kindness, and complexity by looking carefully at our perceptions of others, and by studying the wisdom of authors from Charles Dickens to Flannery O’Connor, from James Agee to George Orwell, and many others. In this influential conversation about empathy and engagement, Coles inspires us to seek out deeper meaning in our lives, and guides us toward achieving greater clarity, strength, and richness of understanding, amid the moral, psychological, and social complexities of the modern world.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Children of Crisis, a profound examination of how listening to stories promotes learning and self-discovery. As a professor emeritus at Harvard University, a renowned child psychiatrist, and the author of more than forty books, including The Moral Intelligence of Children, Robert Coles knows better than anyone the transformative power of learning and literature on young minds. In this “persuasive” book (The New York Times Book Review), Coles convenes a virtual symposium of college, law, and medical school students to explore the phenomenon of storytelling as a source of values and character. Here are transcriptions of classroom conversations in which Coles and his students discuss the impact of particular works of literature on their moral development. Here also are Coles’s intimate personal reflections on his experiences in the civil rights movement, his child psychiatry practice, and his interactions with his own literary mentors including William Carlos Williams and L.E. Sissman. The life lessons learned from these stories are of special resonance to doctors and teachers looking to apply them in classroom and clinical environments. The rare public intellectual to be honored with a MacArthur Award, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a National Humanities Medal, Robert Coles is a true national treasure, and The Call of Stories is, in the words of National Book Award winner Walker Percy, “Coles at his wisest and best.”

Dr. Coles shows how the work of writers, artists, and thinkers of the past two centuries can inspire our own reflections on our daily lives. He offers a compelling call to venture outside our own selves and lives and to listen, attentively and with growing humanity, to the way others get through life, and he encourages us to examine our own character, kindness, and complexity by studying the wisdom of authors from Charles Dickens to Flannery O'Connor, from James Agee to George Orwell, and many others. In this influential conversation about empathy and engagement, Coles inspires us to seek out deeper meaning in our lives and guides us toward achieving greater clarity, strength, and richness of understanding amid the moral, psychological, and social complexities of the modern world. --Publisher's description from dust cover.

A New York Times bestseller? Oh, you know the dogs weren't going to let the cats get away with that! This canine companion to I Could Pee on This, the beloved volume of poems by cats, I Could Chew on This will have dog lovers laughing out loud. Doggie laureates not only chew on quite a lot of things, they also reveal their creativity, their hidden motives, and their eternal (and sometimes misguided) effervescence through such musings as "I Dropped a Ball," "I Lose My Mind When You Leave the House," and "Can You Smell That?" Accompanied throughout by portraits of the canine poets in all their magnificence, I Could Chew on This is a work of unbridled enthusiasm, insatiable appetite, and, yes, creative genius. Plus, this is a fixed-format version of the book, which looks nearly identical to the print version.

In this book, Coles explores the concept of idealism and why it necessary to the individual and society.

Collection of essays on the connection between medicine and literature and how novelists and physicians are both, in a sense, diagnosticians; the book focuses, in particular, on Walker Percy, a writer who had trained as a pathologist.

The Shoah is without question the defining moment in modern history, and it has transformed the manner in which the Bible is read and how God is understood. Questions that hitherto were rarely posed publicly must now be posed, and the human drama born out of exile, bondage, and genocide must be reckoned with in a new light. These are issues that are predicated on a faithful God to whom challenging and even unanswerable questions must be voiced. So, how might the Hebrew prophets address such contemporary issues as imperial militarism, eminent domain, trust and trauma, hunger and power, memory and shame, blame and self-critique, madness and exceptionalism? The daring words of the Hebrew prophets must have voices of testimony and witness in our time. This book speaks to that challenge.