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If This Isn't Nice What Is?, (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches And Other Words To Live By

Best known as one of America’s most astonishing and enduring contemporary novelists, Kurt Vonnegut was also a celebrated commencement address giver. Vonnegut never graduated from college, so his words to any class of graduating seniors always carried the delight, and gentle irony, of someone savoring an achievement he himself had not had occasion to savor on his own behalf. “But about my Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now,” Vonnegut, an avowed Humanist, would say sometimes in a graduation speech, “one of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. . . . We could be drinking lemonade in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’” If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? includes eleven speeches and four pieces of journalism on related themes. Six of the fifteen are new to the second edition—on topics as wide-ranging as why it is that Kurt Vonnegut’s dog loves people more than Kurt Vonnegut does, and what it feels like to be the most censored writer in America—and much, much more. In each of these talks and short essays, Vonnegut takes pains to find the few things worth saying and a conversational voice to say them in that’s funny and serious and joyful even if sometimes without seeming so.

Hardcover: 208 pages

Publisher: Seven Stories Press; 2 Expanded edition (April 26, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1609806972

ISBN-13: 978-1609806972

Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches

Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #74,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #13 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Speeches #91 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Speech #1222 in Books > Self-Help > Motivational

A little disappointed. It's a lot of repeated quotes and recurring ideas. I don't know why I would have expected any different. Considering that no one writes speeches like chapters in a novel, back to back. It was silly of me to expect differently. But I see this book as a win for simply having these documents archived in a book in my library now.

It is what you think it's gonna be. A lot of the speeches are really similar, just like all graduation speeches tend to be. It's definitely not a book you should read cover to cover, but I found it enjoyable nonetheless.

I am impressed from the writings of Kurt because he is a humanist who critisizes the stupid politics dearly good read

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