The Last Lecture

Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture. New York: Hyperion Books. 2008. Print.

I haven’t read an autobiography in a long time, and I have definitely never read one like The Last Lecture. This book does so much more than just go through the events of a man’s life. It illustrates Pausch’s life beautifully and then gives a lesson to go along with each story. The best part about this book is that it doesn’t focus on the generic lessons of life that everyone emphasizes over and over. It takes broad lessons and then breaks them up into smaller, more manageable and understandable teachings that the reader can grasp onto. The book was also very cool and unique in the fact that it took all of the small lessons and tied those in to the larger message of “follow your dreams’ that Pausch was trying to convey.

            I really liked how Pausch had short chapters each with their own lesson. Some authors try to jam pack a bunch of small lessons into one large chapter, which doesn’t work. That way, all of the small lessons get lost in the reader’s mind. The small break up of Pausch’s book helps emphasize each individual moral being taught and helps organize them in the reader’s mind. I also enjoyed the pictures he placed throughout the book. It was a nice touch and helped Pausch seem like an actual person and it made me feel like I got to know him better through the photos.

            I did not like how Pausch jumped around in the chronology of his life. I see that he tried to organize his book based upon the lessons he wanted to teach the reader, but that made the events of his life jumble up. I got very confused because he started the book at a point in his life before he gave the lecture, which made me think that the book was going to detail his process of creating his lecture, but then by the time I was only a fourth of the way through, the lecture had already happened. He kept jumping from times when he was young to times after his lecture to when he was first getting diagnosed and so on. The jumpiness of the book was hard to get a handle on. I wish he would have reorganized it so that the lessons coincided better with an actual chronology of events.

            If you ever come across this book, I recommend that you read it, no matter what age you are. This book contains lessons for people of all walks of life. I feel like a better person after reading this book and I guarantee you will too.