Product Description

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Questions for Randy Pausch

We were shy about barging in on Randy Pausch's valuable time to ask him a few questions about his expansion of his famous Last Lecture into the book by the same name, but he was gracious enough to take a moment to answer. (See Randy to the right with his kids, Dylan, Logan, and Chloe.) As anyone who has watched the lecture or read the book will understand, the really crucial question is the last one, and we weren't surprised to learn that the "secret" to winning giant stuffed animals on the midway, like most anything else, is sheer persistence.

Amazon.com: I apologize for asking a question you must get far more often than you'd like, but how are you feeling?

Pausch: The tumors are not yet large enough to affect my health, so all the problems are related to the chemotherapy. I have neuropathy (numbness in fingers and toes), and varying degrees of GI discomfort, mild nausea, and fatigue. Occasionally I have an unusually bad reaction to a chemo infusion (last week, I spiked a 103 fever), but all of this is a small price to pay for walkin' around.

Amazon.com: Your lecture at Carnegie Mellon has reached millions of people, but even with the short time you apparently have, you wanted to write a book. What did you want to say in a book that you weren't able to say in the lecture?

Pausch: Well, the lecture was written quickly--in under a week. And it was time-limited. I had a great six-hour lecture I could give, but I suspect it would have been less popular at that length ;-).

A book allows me to cover many, many more stories from my life and the attendant lessons I hope my kids can take from them. Also, much of my lecture at Carnegie Mellon focused on the professional side of my life--my students, colleagues and career. The book is a far more personal look at my childhood dreams and all the lessons I've learned. Putting words on paper, I've found, was a better way for me to share all the yearnings I have regarding my wife, children and other loved ones. I knew I couldn't have gone into those subjects on stage without getting emotional.

Amazon.com: You talk about the importance--and the possibility!--of following your childhood dreams, and of keeping that childlike sense of wonder. But are there things you didn't learn until you were a grownup that helped you do that?

Pausch: That's a great question. I think the most important thing I learned as I grew older was that you can't get anywhere without help. That means people have to want to help you, and that begs the question: What kind of person do other people seem to want to help? That strikes me as a pretty good operational answer to the existential question: "What kind of person should you try to be?"

Amazon.com: One of the things that struck me most about your talk was how many other people you talked about. You made me want to meet them and work with them--and believe me, I wouldn't make much of a computer scientist. Do you think the people you've brought together will be your legacy as well?

Pausch: Like any teacher, my students are my biggest professional legacy. I'd like to think that the people I've crossed paths with have learned something from me, and I know I learned a great deal from them, for which I am very grateful. Certainly, I've dedicated a lot of my teaching to helping young folks realize how they need to be able to work with other people--especially other people who are very different from themselves.

Amazon.com: And last, the most important question: What's the secret for knocking down those milk bottles on the midway?

Pausch: Two-part answer:
1) long arms
2) discretionary income / persistence

Actually, I was never good at the milk bottles. I'm more of a ring toss and softball-in-milk-can guy, myself. More seriously, though, most people try these games once, don't win immediately, and then give up. I've won *lots* of midway stuffed animals, but I don't ever recall winning one on the very first try. Nor did I expect to. That's why I think midway games are a great metaphor for life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-08
• Released on: 2008-04-08
• Format: Roughcut
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author
Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988-1997, he taught at the University of Virginia. He is an award-winning teacher and researcher, and has worked with Adobe, Google, Electronic Arts (EA), and Walt Disney Imagineering, and pioneered the Alice project. He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.

Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, attended the last lecture, and wrote the story that helped fuel worldwide interest in it. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex and Eden.

Customer Reviews

Makes you rethink your life
All I can say is wow. When everyone is thinking what about me this book really makes you think about everyone else. A must read for everyone.

Charming, quick read
I was honestly worried that this would be exactly the sort of book that I can't stand. "Guy nears death, which buys him some gravity that he wouldn't otherwise have earned." I.e., Tuesdays with Morrie Volume 2: Morrie's Back ... And Getting Even.

Fortunately, Pausch doesn't try to justify The Last Lecture on the basis of his being a Wise Dying Man. If you've not already watched Pausch's last-lecture video on the web (I have not): he's a computer-science professor at CMU, dying of pancreatic cancer. The Wikipedia suggests that his cancer is now terminal. Pausch, being a rigorous sort, knows he' doesn't have long to live: only 4% of pancreatic-cancer patients make it to five years. He believes he's had an extraordinary life, he wants to reflect on how blessed he is, and he feels like sharing with us how he got there. Result being: if you make it through this book without crying once, I will pay you. I certainly couldn't make it through with dry eyes.

The beginning and the end of The Last Lecture are the real tear-jerking parts: we meet Pausch, we meet his family, and we learn about his upcoming death. At the end we hear, for just a moment, about the tears that he and his wife have shed before (and after) bed -- after the bedroom door has closed and the kids are asleep. That's one of the most heartbreaking parts of it all: Pausch's children don't yet know about his illness; the parents are waiting until he becomes symptomatic to tell them. In the meantime he's preparing: delivering a last lecture to impart some life lessons, getting his life insurance in order, buying a sports car, going on fun trips with his wife ... having a good time, and trying not to think too much about his own death.

Between the watery-eye parts is a set of straightforward and eminently practical life lessons for the reader: write thank-you notes; try harder than the other guy; be honest with everyone. Each moral is backed by a story from Pausch's own life, and -- honestly -- perhaps a bit too much of "look at how excellent a guy I am": every lesson he's teaching is of the form "someone out there was good enough to do me this favor, so now I'm passing it on to you." This structure may be what Pausch calls a "head fake." In sports, a head fake is where you trick the other guy into thinking you're going one way when in fact you're going the other. In his life, Pausch uses his own brand of head fake to make his students think he's teaching them one thing when in fact he's teaching them another. The book self-admittedly contains a few head fakes, and I think a few others are hidden. One of the hidden head fakes is the final lesson: "Help out other people however you can, just like I have with this book."

It's charming; you almost have to end up admiring Pausch. And you have to wish his family well. I'm sure they're going to miss him.

been through this one before
I was really looking forward to reading this book after hearing someone rave about this book to me. As a collegiate myself, i must have had high expectations. As I painstakingly read through the only three chapters I read it occurred to me how sad to see that it takes dying for most of us to "get it", to do the necessary steps to appreciate others and to be one with who we really are not the physical mundane object we think, what an honor to become chosen to speak words of encouragement for the sake of "saving others". I read this book and it is a carbon copy of the life's lessons I have experienced, things we all could have learned and held on to in our youth. I couldn't get through another chapter without realizing it lost my interest, through chapter 3. There were mementos that were obvious to the family, to sell this book as a bestseller.... I wasn't surprised to see the above ratings, and to each his/her own I say- I feel the book was overrated. This isn't to bash the author at all. Time to LIVE life and for God's sake, don't wait for something detrimental to happen to get it before it's "too late".