Leading Lives That Matter compiles a wide range of texts—from ancient and contemporary literature, social commentary, and philosophy—related to questions of vital interest for those who are trying to decide what to do with their lives and what kind of human beings they hope to become. This book draws upon both religious and secular wisdom, bringing these sources into conversation with one another. 

Mark Schwehn and Dorothy Bass identify four vocabularies typically used in discussions of the meaning of life choices: authenticity, virtue, exemplarity, and vocation. Six guiding questions shape the chapters that contain the majority of the texts. Each chapter’s texts provide a variety of insights and approaches to be considered in addressing the question, arranged and introduced in ways that prompt deeper reflection. Leading Lives That Matter invites readers into arguments that have persisted for generations about what we human beings should do and who we should be. 

This second edition includes forty-seven new readings from a diverse array of writers, including Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Denise Levertov, Malcolm Gladwell, Julia Alvarez, Alice Walker, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis, and Chung Tzu. Three new guiding questions have also been added: To whom and to what should I listen as I decide what work to do? With whom and for whom shall I live? What are my obligations to future human and other life? 

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE
William James, “What Makes A Life Significant?”
Vincent Harding, “I Hear Them . . . Calling”

PART I VOCABULARIES

AUTHENTICITY
Charles Taylor, from The Ethics of Authenticity
Parker Palmer, from A Hidden Wholeness
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Solitude of Self”
Thanissari Bhikku, “No-Self or Not-Self?”
Ajahn Karunadhammo, “This Is Who I Am”

VIRTUE
Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, from Glittering Vices
Josef Pieper, from Faith, Hope, Love
Natalia Ginzburg, from The Little Virtues
David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List”
Mencius, from The Sayings of Mencius
Hsun Tzu, from Improving Yourself
Edith Jones, “Patience”

EXEMPLARITY
Linda Zagzebski, from Exemplarist Moral Theory
Dorothy Day, from Therese
Gordon Marino, “The Greatest”
Madeline Miller, “False Counsellor”

VOCATION
Denise Levertov, “Annunciation” 
Lee Hardy, from The Fabric of this World
Gary Badcock, from The Way of Life
C.S. Lewis, from “Learning in War-Time”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Ethics
Frederick Buechner, from Wishful Thinking
Will Campbell, from “Vocation as Grace”
Chung Tzu, from Mastering Life

PART II QUESTIONS

1.  Must my job be the primary source of my identity?
Russell Muirhead, from Just Work
Dorothy L. Sayers, “Why Work?”
Gilbert Meilaender, from Friendship
Toni Morrison, “The Work You Do, the Person You Are”
Robert Frost, “Two Tramps in Mud Time”
Marge Piercy, “To Be of Use”
Stephen Dunn, “The Last Hours”
Carl Dennis, “A Roofer”
Kazuo Ishiguro, from The Remains of the Day

2. To whom and to what should I listen as I decide what work to do?
Will Weaver, “The Undeclared Major”
Amy Tan, “Two Kinds,” from The Joy Luck Club
Tayeb Salih, A Handful of Dates
Lois Lowry, from The Giver
Willa Cather, “The Ancient Ones,” from The Song of the Lark
Albert Schweitzer, “I Resolve to Become a Jungle Doctor”
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, from the screenplay of Good Will Hunting
James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”

3.  With whom and for whom shall I live?
Alasdair MacIntyre, from Dependent Rational Animals
Kate Daniels, “Prayer for My Children"
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Roseto Mystery”
The Book of Ruth
Jhumpa Lahiri, “My Two Lives”
Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
Sullivan Ballou, a letter to his wife, 1861
Samuel Wells, “Rethinking Service”
Martin Luther King Jr., from “The World House”

4. Is a balanced life possible and preferable to a life focused primarily on work?
Abigail Zuger, “Defining a Doctor”
Karen S. Sibert, “Don’t Quit this Day Job”
Jane Addams, “Filial Relations,” from Democracy and Social Ethics
William Butler Yeats, “The Choice”
Homer, from The Iliad 
Martha Nussbaum, interviewed by Bill Moyers for “A World of Ideas”
Hannah Boushey, from Home Economics
Matt Bloom, “The Illusive Search for Balance”
Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, from The Sabbath

5. What are my obligations to future humans and other life?
Larry Rasmussen, “A Love Letter from the Holocene to the Anthropocene”
Rachel Carson, “A Fable for Tomorrow”
Scott Russell Sanders, “Sanctuary”
Camille Dungy, “Writing Home”
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Haunted Oak”
Wanda Coleman, “Requiem for a Nest”
Anthony Walton, “Carrion”
Natasha Trethewey, “Carpenter Bee”
Winona LaDuke, from “Our Home on Earth”
Wangari Maathai, from “Nobel Peace Prize Lecture” 
Pope Francis, from Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home
Genesis 1-3 NRSV
Ursula K. LeGuin, “She Unnames Them”
Acoma Creation Myth
Denise Levertov, “Beginners”

6. How shall I tell the story of my life?
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Mary Catherine Bateson, from Composing a Life
Julia Alvarez, from Something to Declare
Wendell Berry, from Jayber Crow
Alice Walker, from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
Dan McAdams, “An American Life Story”
Michael T. Kaufman, “Robert McG. Thomas, 60, Chronicler of Unsung Lives”

EPILOGUE
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych