Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, 25th Anniversary Edition Paperback – October 8, 2002

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is about an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lessons. Death can be viewed as a chance to teach people to live their lives to the fullest. Mitch was a former student of Brandeis University who began visiting an old professor by the name of Morrie Schwartz after seeing him on the television show "Nightline". Morrie had been diagnosed with ALS and did an interview with Ted Koppel to help inform people of how he is living with this debilitating disease. When Mitch realizes that one of his favorite professors is dying he feels the need to reach out to him. Mitch goes and visits Morrie and this one visit turns into weekly teaching sessions that occur each week on Tuesdays until the day Morrie dies. They discussed a specific topic each Tuesday they met. Mitch wanted the clarity that Morrie had so he made a list for each visit. Morrie taught Mitch about death, fear, aging, greed, marriage, family, society, forgiveness and having a meaningful life. As the meetings went on Mitch began realizing how he had let society dictate his happiness in life. He began to realize what is really important in life and how to have that true happiness Morrie speaks of. Over time and after all of these teachings Mitch realizes he is a changed man because of Morrie.There are many social aspects that are discussed in this book. Some of these aspects are death, love, family, emotions, ageing, materialism, marriage, culture and forgiveness. Each of Morrie's lessons to Mitch stresses the importance of making your own culture and to not allowing the culture of society to dictate how you live your life. Mitch Albom found a way to describe positive aspects of dying from meeting with Morrie. Morrie on the other hand hopes Mitch is not faced with some of the same regrets he had for things he did not fulfill in life.Mitch is pleased with the lessons he has learned that have helped change him back to the person he was in college. Mitch allowed the norm of culture to change his beliefs over the years. Society made him scared to think outside the box and Morrie taught him it is okay for him to make his own culture to live in. Morrie saw his disease as an opportunity rather than a tragedy. He realized that if you accepted that you could die at any time that you would do nothing about it and just wait for it to happen. He also realized how focused people were on materialistic items and how much valuable time is wasted with these materialistic items.Mitch Albom created a way to make you feel like you lived through this time with him in this book. He makes you think about death and dying and how that can affect your everyday life. This book could change the way you currently think about some social aspects of life. It makes you think about the way you treat people, how you are living your life and the appreciation you should have for life. You need to live each day as if it was your last. The fulfillment you would have from this would add meaning to your life. This book makes you think about how society can dictate aspects of what is important in life. People should make decisions for themselves and not for the norm of society. People need to look at what will make them happy and follow through until they reach that self-happiness. They should not wait until they get news of death to try to live a lifetime of wishes in a short period of time.

Good easy thought provoking read

Tuesdays With Morrie was recommended to me by a good friend. I finished it on a 3-hour road trip and I have to say it was very timely and relatable considering I went to highschool in Newton, MA where Morrie lives. I've been navigating a complicated relationship with a parents whose health is declining and it really put things into perspective for me. Definitely a tear jerker toward the end. Good read for anyone going through something similar.

This book is a life changing experience. Admittedly, I didn’t read it when it was first published. I actually read the author’s book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven a few years back when it was assigned summer reading for my girls. So, I expected it to be a good read. It was so much more! I recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning what is really important in life and who wants to create their own culture. Please 🙏🏻 read this book!

Tuesdays with MorrieMitch Albom is a friendly sort of average insightful guy in regards to the Human Condition. And when we, mere mortals, out here read his works - it touches the average man/woman and young person with an intensity that makes us actually think and consider various inner convictions and ideals. I see no need to fill volumes of worthless pages with iconoclastic rambling rhetoric to relate such a simple story as this or please those with a self-righteousness condescension to anyone who likes them that makes their negative reviews completely suspect. To those who find it too simplistic to be meaningful it would seem they are among those "useful idiots" identified in recent literature.Before hitting the send button...I usually sit and ponder the book holistically for its intrinsic value and effect on me and others that might be willing to give it a chance.And that is why I am completely taken aback by the negative reviews of the Albom books especially "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" created by him and also how they compare that work to this one or this to another so poorly. It is just mind boggling how anyone can herald one with positive praise and then the other with negativism or treat both of them as miserable failures.And my lord, the extremes on these book reviews for this simplistic series of thought provoking submissions seem to go from Condemnation as if it were the words of Satanic himself - to the other extreme that Mitch's words are Angelic Music playing in some mystical background. Yet in truth neither is correct or `spot-on'.His revelations are in no way negative but neither are they divinely found in the cosmos floating around like free spirited thoughts of Godlike omnipotent creatures that can be trapped with a butterfly net of Morrie's death. Certainly we can find these concepts and self-discovered truths throughout history and literature that he found near death - `everywhere' - and even in the pew book holders of our local churches; if we bothered any more to investigate that great guide to spiritual well being and the great light of truth. It is called "The Bible".But if you do not like that - there are thousands of equally profound writings to be sure. But wow, can't some of these people just read a short story for what it is? My goodness, if one can find wisdom in a newspaper peanuts cartoon - or in Beadle Bailey or Garfield - surely one can give Mr. Albom some slack here!Of course most of the negatives are obviously political, anti-religious and socially engineering motivated haters, who are morally challenged, self-centered, jealous egotist of the left persuasion, or at least they would seem so. A in reverse the other side is too ready to praise a mere simple story of death as prophetic in nature.For my part I am on the side of the Angels however because "To be cursed by the devilish hate-mongers who seem to hate everything about this book, and Mitch or anyone else who puts their fingerprints on its pages - Is to be truly blessed" in the words of `Kwai Chan Cane' in the old film "Kungfu".Most of us are in the middle of that "pulling in opposite directions" thing Morrie speaks of in the book. These Albom books are not classics, not epics nor are they the voice from the burning bush - for Pete's Sake. No one expects them to be...except the naysayers. I am no fan of the Oprah Winfrey minion squads who live and breathe on her every word or whim. Nor do I run out and buy her book recommendations. I did not even know until I read a negative review she had anything to do with it. And if you really want to attack someone for making a buck off of pain and suffering - try her and her buddy Dr. Phil!These books do tend to take people to places where they do not want to go or fear to go - and they force them to go there if you give them a chance and read them through. They make you think of mortality, death, disease, deterioration of one's senses and flesh, of loss and tragedy and heaven and what comes after life and how we live, interact and conduct ourselves while here on this earth and if it is in its own simple way or through simple tales and stories...SIMPLE...so what?In some cases they take us to places that find Morrie being a downright scoundrel in his younger years to one group - and a hero to another. Radicalism on one hand makes him into a fraud to the reality of fundamental truths and real intellectual civilized awareness and to honorable insight - and makes him look like an unprofessional buffoon. And yet on the other hand a driving force for social change in his own mind; some of it good and a lot of it bad from my read and his generation helped cause the destruction of civil society in the process.Yet one senses that Morrie was simply human and had everyone else's flaws and weaknesses and he was almost like an "Absent Minded Professor" in some respects and in some of the chapters. And in one...he actually fit the bill where the author calls him "Foolishly Naive" in "The Professor Part II".But this book and Albom's others are easy, enjoyable reads. Yes, saddening in a sort of good way - and fascinatingly thought provoking and interesting in others. This one challenges you inside and out to just step back and take a look at your own life, your actions and in actions and do what Socrates thought was so important in life; to do some Self-Examination when he wrote; "The Unexamined life is not Worth Living!" -That great thinker set the stage for a great mental process - many hundreds of years beyond his own time for people like Mitch Albom and others - who would, on their own initiative, use these philosophies to give us pause in our present lives to make us question just what it is that drives us and what it is that is really the foundation of importance to each of our souls, spirits, everyday lives and for our individual well-being.It is simply pure and unadulterated boulder dash, poppycock and simpleton rubbish to evaluate/review his books badly. The Neanderthals and hypocrites out there - need you to discard anything `heaven like' or `God Fearing' or `spiritual' and only accept a work that avoids these essentials, almost cowardly sometimes in heir manipulative intent to steer around any in depth discussion of these profound questions or force others to detour away from these subjects even when contemplating the mysteries of the Cosmos, the Universe, Life and what comes afterwards.This work is simply - just as good and moving as its brothers or sisters I.E. "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" or "For One More Day". It is not better, it is not worse, it is not superior in any way and it is not the most monumental epic story ever told! It is just a good book, a good tale, a good story and a book that makes you say, within your own heart, mind and soul -"Wow, how would I spend my last days, weeks or months - if I had such a disease or knew my approximate day of death?" And what will it be like - when - I in whatever form I become - float off into that hidden world of existence in realms beyond the skies?A magnificent assertion that Morrie was right about however is that - "Most people do not want to discuss dying or they inwardly believe they are not going too!"For me the best chapter in this book was "The Eighth Tuesday" when they discuss the evils of - and the quest for money and power; because the exchange of a true loving hug of friendship is worth more than "Gold Pressed Platinum" or even the "Power of that supercilious - Ted Turner".I am reading all of this Author's works and they mean a great deal to my thought process recently and more to me now - as I have just survived my fourth major heart attack and did not expect to live through the ambulance ride to the hospital. So they are having a profound effect upon me; one and all.Each has a special meaning to me and each in a different way. And each has touched a nerve in my soul, my mind, my heart and my thinking and touched me in deep emotional ways. I will continue to read them all with joy and a smile and a questioning heart. I have many books on my shelves some intense, some long, some short like these. I find them all fascinating and always give the author the benefit of the doubt on usefulness."Tuesday's With Morrie" has no more or less identifiable flaws in it - then do any other books from any other author. BUT I LIKE THEM ALL! And if the nay Sayers read them all and pick one over the other and call one dribble for mere politically partisanship, or special interest liberalized nonsense reasons or try to hate bait us into condemning any of them because one touches upon a forbidden idiotic progressive theme of God, country, patriotism, spirituality, religion or heaven or the afterlife - then shame on the reader for interjecting their prejudice, condescending attitudes, mentally and literary challenged minds into it.This is pure and simply a good book! Other readers and reviewers may find this book moving or not but to say it is bad is simpleminded.They are wonderfully written and I find benefit to all the themes of Mitch Albom's books. This one has you again wondering who Morrie would be in my life or better yet "How many Morrie-like persons were there in my adventure in this world and this existence"!Again delightfully thought provoking and I thank the author for expanding my imagination, my intellectual pondering and for sharing his vision through Morrie about some of life's many questions - with the world."The Five People You Meet in Heaven" - The best so far"Tuesdays with Morrie" - Second BestI am now already - "For One More Day".JPL

Beautiful story, very well written, and a must read.

Good book from a good author. Love ordering my books from Amazon if I don’t go in store for them.

The book really his home. We all are born and all die. What can we do to make the most impact while we are here?