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Are you out of Christmas gift ideas for those on your list? Maybe you’ve put it off because some people are just hard to shop for. christmas gifts for.
Older people are usually on this list, as are those who insist that any book they receive comes only from the highest level of writing.
Then there are people struggling with difficult circumstances in their work or family life, times when they are under enormous pressure. lead and lead wiselyor times when they seem to be, and probably actually are, well, miserable. They need some joy in the season that is supposed to be marked by it.
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So, here are three book recommendations for you.
The first is for older people (and for anyone who wants to follow a brilliant writer through a life extraordinarily well-lived over the past nine decades).
“We did not and could not see America as a racist, cruelly capitalist, and essentially corrupt country in need of revolutionary change. We thought, and most of us still think, that America, for all its flaws, is the most interesting, most generous, and greatest country in the world.”
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For more than 40 years, the columns, essays and books by Joseph Epstein of all kinds (novels, biographies, short story collections, meditations on great themes like “Ambition”) have come into my hands and have always brought with them delight and a keen sense that there are writers and good writers and then there are truly talented writers. Joseph Epstein is among the few of the latter of the last half century. I don’t think I’m the only one who concludes that he is the greatest living essayist in the United States.
Last year, Epstein gave us an autobiography — “Never say that you have had a lucky life, especially if you have had a lucky life.” Just those couple of sentences quoted above convey so much about the “Silent Generation” (they were born in 1937) that you should believe me when I say that every page of the book provokes a nod and often a laugh, and many offer insights that we might have been aware of but had never articulated or read. I think I read EM Forster’s conclusion that “You’re being influenced when you say ‘I could have written that myself if I hadn’t been so busy'” in one of Epstein’s hundreds of wonderful essays.
“Wonderful” because he writes so that he can be understood and does not skimp on advanced knowledge that forces him to stop a little and think. He will surprise you with a “famous anecdote about Croesus”, for example, one about which perhaps never have heard, but also convey it succinctly in case you are among those WHO I missed that story.
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Epstein entertains as much as he educates, almost without exception. (The only Epstein book that didn’t captivate me, his biography of Fred Astaire, was adored by my wife. So every Epstein book has brought me, at least indirectly, joy.)
So if you have a reader to buy from, gift them this book, which is also a memoir of our country’s last collective 80 years. If somehow Joseph Epstein has gone unnoticed until now, start here with this book, then maybe move to his short story collection, “The Goldin Boys,” then dive into any of his essay collections, common or on literature. He will become your friend.
For those who are at earlier stages in their lives and careers and who hold positions that require many difficult and important decisions, Admiral William McRaven (USN, Retired) has written the perfect Christmas gift this year. Admiral McRaven led an extraordinary life throughout his decades rising to the top of the United States Special Forces, starting as (and always remaining) a Navy SEALbut ending his distinguished career at the head of the United States Special Operations Command.
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The admiral has written a couple of other bestsellers, but this year’s “Conquering Crisis: Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them” is a book for anyone with authority over anyone or anything, from top brass to parents, from presidents to directors.yes and school deans to the coaches of each team and leaders of volunteer organizations. The unexpected crisis will come sooner or later for everyone in any of those situations, and Admiral McRaven’s ten lessons will endure because they are written clearly and compellingly, free of management jargon and ridiculous “systems language.”
Finally, the American professor of happiness, Arthur C. Brooks, of the Harvard Business School, teaches the happiness course for the HBS grinders and writes monthly about the scholarship surrounding the topic (and it is vast) for The Atlantic. Brooks has collected his best essays on the subject in “The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life.” If the person on your list is giving you the most trouble selecting a book is having the best or worst of years, you will appreciate Brooks’ work.
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The beauty of finishing your purchases on Amazon or any of the others online book sites? Those books will arrive in a couple of days at your door or can be shipped anywhere.
You can finish your purchases. in half an hour online and then enjoy the true glory of Christmas, at least free of the gift panic.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” is heard weekday afternoons from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on Salem Radio Network and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh brings Americans home to the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on more than 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all online streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel News Roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 pm ET. This. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, has hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, has written for every major American newspaper, and has written for a dozen. books and has moderated two dozen Republican candidate debates, most recently in November 2023. Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. This column previews the main story that will drive his radio and television show today.
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