Take This Advice: The Most Nakedly Honest Graduation Speeches Ever Given [Hardcover]

Sandra Bark (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2005

"BE FREE, AND DANCE THROUGH LIFE."

-- YOKO ONO

"MAKE THE WORLD BEFORE YOU A BETTER ONE BY GOING INTO IT WITH ALL BOLDNESS."

-- SEAMUS HEANEY

"REMEMBER ALWAYS TO SIT UP STRAIGHT."

-- MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT

Take This Advice delivers thirty of the most powerful and inspiring commencement speeches given in the past ten years. With grace and humor, this generation's favorite artists and thinkers address graduates to celebrate an incredible achievement, and to let them know that life after school is not the end of the world -- in fact, it's the beginning.

"THIS IS YOUR TIME. TAKE IT ON."

-- TOM BROKAW

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Among the speeches that Bark bills as "the most nakedly honest graduation speeches ever given" are many that start out rather shy and apologetic, like Salman Rushdie's address to Bard College's class of 1996, in which he observes: "You, unfortunately, have to make do with me." Rushdie's speech is a winner, but it's also an exception; most of the 36 entries in this volume are more trite and perfunctory than nakedly honest. Many of them adopt a graduation tone-humble, omniscient, vaguely condescending-likely to remind readers of their own somnolent ceremony. A few of Bark's speeches do break from this mold, however, and those are the strongest and most affecting in the collection. Wally Lamb takes readers back in time through his own experiences as a father and writer, and Frank McCourt mocks the tropes of other commencement speakers and describes his past as a teacher. Many of the strongest speeches double as mini autobiographies, like Bill Cosby's revelation of his loopy beginnings as a poor and overconfident comedian. One exception is Will Ferrel's comic speech within a speech, a parody of George W. Bush in which Ferrel-as-Bush drawls, "The chances of landing a decent job are about as good as finding weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert. Slim and none. And Slim just left the building." A few chapters later, Bush's speech at his alma mater, Yale, is spiked with several jokes of its own. "It's great day for you," the president tells the graduates' parents, "it's a great day for your wallet." In the end, the book is saved by these few "honest" speakers, who seem to have known instinctively that, when called upon to give advice, the best thing to do is recount your own experience or crack a joke.
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About the Author

Sandra Bark is the author of Cheap & Easy: A Cookbook for Girls on the Go and editor of Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories and Writers Workshop in a Box. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment; First Edition first Printing edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689878494
• ISBN-13: 978-0689878497
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,599,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst of this category of books, April 8, 2007

By 

John H. Hwung (Fair Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Take This Advice: The Most Nakedly Honest Graduation Speeches Ever Given (Hardcover)

This book has even less good speeches than that of "Graduation Day" and "Hold Fast Your Dreams." Though the speakers are famous, that does not mean that what they say are good or inspiring.

However, the speech by Seamus Heaney is pretty good.

The best book so far on graduation speeches is "Graduation Moments."