Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives [Hardcover]

John Edwards (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Most of us can trace the shape of our lives back to a physical place--a childhood home that played an enormous role in defining how we see ourselves and how we choose to make our way in the world. In Home, John Edwards has collected nearly 60 moving stories that reflect how these places, in many ways, are the blueprints of our lives. Home features uplifting, touching, and engaging narratives from all kinds of people across the country--everyday Americans with deeply inspiring stories share the pages with well-known figures from entertainment and religion, from politics and sports.

American Homes

Visit the childhood homes of four contributors to Home:

Eadie Churchill

Kathryn Cline

Tommy Franks

John Glenn

In the pages of Home, you can visit the early homes of:
Mario Batali
Benicio Del Toro
Bob Dole
Tommy Franks
John Glenn
Danny Glover
Nanci Griffith
Sugar Ray Leonard
Maya Lin
Jamie-Lynn Sigler
Steven Spielberg
Vera Wang
Rick Warren
... and many more.

Through words, photos, and illustrations, Home paints a moving picture of America at its best--a country where people, no matter their background, no matter their circumstance, can build a great future. One by one, these different stories reveal our common story--a story that begins with the home we grew up in, the values it gave us, and the hopes that we share.

From Publishers Weekly

Former senator from North Carolina and John Kerry's running mate in 2004, Edwards delivers a poignant coffee-table meditation on an institution as intensely venerated in America as it is universal: home. Some 60 Americans—from novelist Isabel Allende, chef Mario Batali, musician John Mellencamp, quarterback Joe Montana and architect Maya Lin to numerous lesser-known professionals in social work, farming and academia—contribute reflections on the place where they grew up or the locus that has meant the most to them in their lives; large full-color photographs of those places accompany their stories. Their first-person testimony is consistently engaging and downright endearing. Danny Glover, for example, recalls his family's house in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco as the source from which he and his siblings inherited their lifelong consciousness of "equanimity and responsibility, ownership and aspiration." Paging through the book offers the reader a pleasant sense of discovery—of how people feel about how they live. Edwards's introduction, which unfortunately reads like a political speech, gives way to an inspiring, myth-making journey through diverse lives sprung from a vast, ever changing America. (Nov. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (November 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060884541
• ISBN-13: 978-0060884543
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,290,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Gift for Mom, November 25, 2006

By 

Chuckles (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (Hardcover)

Oops,
I made this a reply above, so I'll repeat it here. I bought this book for myself and quickly realized that my Mom and Mother-in-law would LOVE it. All of the profits are going to charity. Most other politicians use books as a way of raising money for upcoming races. Donors who are limited to $2000 in direct donations can buy 1000 books and the profits go to the candidate. But, John Edwards is giving AWAY all the profits. That's something different, and something special.

39 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This captures what it means to be at Home, November 15, 2006

By 

J. Taylor "lokapala" (Directly over the center of the earth) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (Hardcover)

Until I read this book, I had given up on the Democratic Party. It didn't seem to have any visionaries. This book is a vision of Home, of what we're all trying to find, a place that makes sense of the world, a place we belong. Okay, I'm staying with the Dems, for now. One John Edwards makes up for a lot of drones in the party.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Down Home Reminisce, May 1, 2007

By 

MrTwistoff "hobbesclarity" (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (Hardcover)

This is not an analysis of home, or the concept of home. It is a series of essays that reminisce on what childhood homes were like. Some of the essays are by famous people, others by less famous average people types.

Although the book provides a few insights into personal meaning for each of these people, it does not approach the larger issue of Home and what it might mean to us as a people. This is a coffee table book at best, not one for reading through and through.

It's not that the book is bad, it's just that I found little meaning in it apart from understanding these people's history a little better. It didn't challenge me to examine, to understand, it was listening to friends reflect on the smell of bread in the kitchen. Not a bad activity at all, but don't expect great significance to arise from such a down home exercise.

If you want something that explores the subject deeply, I highly recommend "House As A Mirror of Self."