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Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Salter
Creator: John Mccain
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
Buy Used: $34.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 1768057
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0739306618
Dewey Decimal Number: 179.6
EAN: 9780739306611
ASIN: 0739306618
Publication Date: April 13, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
“Courage,” Winston Churchill explained, is “the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others.” As a naval officer, P.O.W., and one of America’s most admired political leaders, John McCain has seen countless acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Now, in this inspiring meditation on courage, he shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear.
“We are taught to understand, correctly, that courage is not the absence of fear but the capacity for action despite our fears,” McCain reminds us, as a way of introducing the stories of figures both famous and obscure that he finds most compelling—from the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to Sgt. Roy Benavidez, who ignored his own well-being to rescue eight of his men from an ambush in the Vietnam jungle; from 1960s civil rights leader John Lewis, who wrote, “When I care about something, I’m prepared to take the long, hard road,” to Hannah Senesh, who, in protecting her comrades in the Hungarian resistance against Hitler’s SS, chose a martyr’s death over a despot’s mercy.
These are some of the examples McCain turns to for inspiration and offers to others to help them summon the resolve to be both good and great. He explains the value of courage in both everyday actions and extraordinary feats. We learn why moral principles and physical courage are often not distinct quantities but two sides of the same coin. Most of all, readers discover how sometimes simply setting the right example can be the ultimate act of courage.
Written by one of our most respected public figures, Why Courage Matters is that rare book with a message both timely and timeless. This is a work for anyone seeking to understand how the mystery and gift of courage can empower us and change our lives.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Courage, And Politics November 19, 2008
"Why Courage Matters" is the thoughts of a hero on what courage is and how each of us can exhibit it. Author John McCain begins with his views of problems which arise in every day life when courage is lacking. He defines what is and what is not courage and cautions against watering it down to include things which are not really courageous. He expounds on the types of courage, including moral and physical.
Most of the book consists of the stories of courageous individuals. Some came from World War II, including troops and a Jewish undercover agent in Europe. He adds an American Indian who fought to preserve his people's way of life, a Mexican who fought oppression in his country and a Burmese activist. At the end he comes back to how courage can enable us to reach higher than we otherwise would.
I found this book to be interesting, but it did not stir me to action. As I went through this book, I was torn between the image of an author who told stories of great courage and one of a politician who tried to associate himself with courageous individuals from as many groups as he could. Ultimately, the latter image prevailed.
Read it and weep for your country November 6, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
McCain's book is not original, but the technique is sound. The technique is to show good examples to follow.
McCain won't be the next President. That is unfortunate. The book shows the character of the man, which is of an honorable and decent man. This is going out of style, which is more a reflection of this country than upon McCain himself. He fought the good fight, no need for regrets. I don't agree with him on important matters, but there is no question about his loyalty to his country.
JFK's Profiles in Courage comes to mind. Kennedy's book was about US Senators who he believed showed political courage in going against public opinion and suffered the consequences of their principled stands. McCain's profile's were more of the physical kind of courage, who risked their very lives as opposed to Kennedy's, who only risked their political careers.
McCain should have considered putting Winston Churchill in his book as another example of courage. Yet Churchill would be a better fit in JFK's book because Churchill's courage was perhaps not so much physical courage, but moral and political courage. When Churchill denounced the Munich agreement to appease Hitler in the House of Commons- he couldn't speak for several minutes because of the uproar against him. How many politicans in this day are willing to tell the crowd they are making a big mistake? History showed that Churchill was right about Hitler. Unfortunately for England and the world, great suffering had to be endured because they failed to listen to him.
 Surprising tidbits about McCain's colorful past! October 22, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was hesitant at first to read a book that I thought might be critical of war hero John McCain. I mean, there are things in McCain's past (agoraphobia, divorcing his first wife, extramarital affairs, substandard hygiene) that should be left alone. But after the initial shock of these wore off, I was treated to many insider moments...McCain suprising wife cindy with three fur coats, McCain treating daughter Meghan to a $500,000 shopping spree at Tiffany's, McCain buying himself the red Ferrarri he always wanted, only to decide he didn't like it, and impulsively return it two days later. I am also fascinated by his refusal to wear shoes in the Senate building, and the fact that he washes his hands 100,000 times a day. He is truly an enigma of a man.
Courage to whip his supporters into patriotic frenzy October 12, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Like everyone else who talks about him, I have the greatest respect for what McCain did for his country 40 years ago. He is a man of great honor and bravery and blah-di-blah-di-blah. He, and his equally bold running mate Sara Palin have shown great courage recently during their campaign rallies when they bravely spew their completely false yet necessary statements about Obama's un-American and terrorist-like activities to their deeply patriotic and extremely well informed supporters.
As this wonderful book makes clear, there are few men alive today who are better qualified to teach us lessons about bravery and courage than McCain. When that worldly-wise elderly woman at the McCain rally last week said she was scared because Obama was an Arab, McCain bravely corrected her and said that Obama was a citizen and nothing to be scared of. Then when another one yelled that Obama was a terrorist, McCain bravely ignored it and forged on with his brilliant speech about Obama wanting to teach sex techniques to the precious kindergarteners, thereby whipping his already hyper-patriotic fans into an even more, uh, patriotic fervor. I don't really know how any of these are examples of bravery or courage but he's McCain, with the maverick record and the five years of being tortured in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib by Blackwater or whatever. I have read all of the Jerome Corsi books at the library just like that wise old lady, and I have also concluded that McCain is a safe old white man who will most likely drive this county further into the toilet. But that's still better than McCain's very "un_American" looking opponent, if you know what I mean.
Stories of, and a true definition of the first virtue- Courage October 5, 2008
This book is surprising in at least two ways. I thought a book by war- hero on Courage John McCain would focus on his own story, his own trial in courage. I also thought it would focus on military heroes. It has it share of these and in fact opens with the story of Vietnam War Medal of honor Winner Roy Benavidez whose courage in rescuing wounded comrades surrounded by Vietcong involved an incredible determination and persistence. It is notable by the way that in choosing the military heroes McCain does not focus on a Sergeant York - like hero remarkable for how many of the enemy he wiped out, but on someone engaged in an act of rescue of his fellow soldiers.
And in fact the theme of willingness to sacrifice for others, to risk oneself to save or help others is at the heart of McCain's conception in this work. The heroes he selects the explorer John Wesley Powell, the Civil Rights leader John Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Hungarian born Israeli parachutist behind the Nazi lines who refused to give the enemy critical information despite the severest torture, Hannah Szenes, the Nobel Prize Winning Burmese civil rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, McCain's fellow prisoners, including his cell mate Bud Day, two soldiers of the Korean War Pete Salter ( Father of McCain's co- author)and the native American Red Cloud- all these in acts of courage forget their own personal safety and risk themselves for others.
McCain and Salter in this book make a real effort to provide a correct definition of Courage, and to underline its place among the first of virtues. They lament the 'defining down' of the concept in American life today in which it can be considered courageous to do things like going to a new hairstylist or talking back to one's therapist.
They go back to the core concept of courage as involving a real placing of oneself ,physically or morally on the line.
This book is winning in another way. McCain's modesty, recognition of his own failings and limitiations, awareness that there were others who were more courageous than himself- provide a sense of a person of broad understanding and appreciation of others.
The feeling I had when reading this book is that McCain is a person of true and strong character, with the right values , the values and moral vision America needs.
I write this at a moment when the economic crisis is great and growing in America, and when Barack Obama has opened a considerable perhaps unsurmountable lead on John McCain.
So it appears as it is now that John McCain will not be President.
However my strong impression in reading this book is : Here is a person truly qualified by experience, by values, by character to be the President of the United States- and to truly do the best for it whatever the cost to himself.
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