Quicklet on Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow's The Last Lecture

ABOUT THE BOOK I’d stumbled upon Randy Pausch, a youngish professor from Carnegie Mellon University, quite by accident in 2011. I’d been looking for a good PowerPoint presentation about time management, and the one he gave was deemed to be really interesting, according to the Google searches I’d done. As I read the mini-bio attached to the file, it occurred to me that I’d heard the name before, so I did some further searching and realized he had written “The Last Lecture”, which I’d heard so much about a few years ago. I immediately headed out and picked up a copy. As I read, I was stunned by the powerful simplicity of his writing. I had already watched “The Last Lecture” on YouTube, as millions had during the time in which the presentation had gone viral, but I was surprised at the profound effect the book had on me. This was a man who, by all accounts, had everything going for him: a great job that he loved, three very young children and a beautiful wife whom he adored. MEET THE AUTHOR Christina St-Jean an Ontario English teacher with a great passion for American literature in particular and the written word in general. Her two daughters, aged 3 and 7, also seem to have a love of books, as her 7 year old just started reading Tom Sawyer herself. Christina follows global events as closely as she can but also enjoys entertainment news. Currently, she is working towards a black belt in karate. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK If anything, The Last Lecture showed to the world just how pervasive media attention is today; after the lecture itself became a YouTube sensation, Pausch made appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Prime Time Live with Diane Sawyer, in addition to appearing on Time’s Top 100 list of the world’s most influential people for 2008. He drew the attention of Katie Couric, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Zaslow, director J.J. Abrams, and none other than Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. He testified before Congress to encourage more funding to be directed to pancreatic cancer research and received a letter from the original President Bush. Buy a copy to keep reading!