The Book That Changed Your Life (137) - This American Life

There's an episode of the public radio program This American Life I thought you might find interesting -#137 The Book That Changed Your Life.

This is a transcript of the introduction. To hear the program or read the entire program, go here.

You don't meet many people who tell you that a book changed their lives. It's an appealing notion, I think, because it's nice to think that our lives could be changed just by an idea, by the vision of the world that happens in a book, instead of what our lives are often changed by-- you know, dumb luck, tragedies, coincidences. Today on our radio program, stories of people whose lives were changed by books.

From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our program today in four acts. 

Act One is called, well, Act One: getting clues about how to live your life from notes scribbled by your dead grandfather in the margins of a book. 

Act Two, The Family That Reads Together:. In this act, the story of how when David Sedaris was a boy, he stumbled upon a dirty book in the woods. It made his sisters view all adults with newfound suspicion. It sent him to the dictionary. 

Act Three, Roger and Me, and Lewis and Clark: the story of a construction worker, and this question, can your life be changed by a book that you have never seen and have not read? 

Act Four, Little Sod Houses For You and Me:. It is the old, old story, my friend. New York girl leaves big city, heads out to a small town on the prairie with a dream and a bonnet.