U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life?

by Bruce Grierson

Overview

In this impressively researched and incisive book, Bruce Grierson draws on over three hundred stories of so-called "U-turners," who have risked their livelihoods to answer a sudden wake-up call. We meet people who change political parties and careers, doctors who quit to become poets, men who become women, people who suddenly become revolutionaries for a cause they didn't care about the day before. In chapters that address everything from the neuroscience behind epiphanies to the possibility of "forcing" a U-turn, Grierson brilliantly describes and elucidates this powerful, mysterious phenomenon, and in doing so illuminates all of our continual struggles with life choices and identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596917958
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Bruce Grierson has been nominated for eight Canadian National MagazineAwards, and is the coauthor of Culture Jam. He lives in Vancouver with his wife and daughter.

Editorial Reviews

Grierson adds a wide range of commentary from philosophers, psychologists, researchers and theoreticians to his discussion of personal change. With careful attention to detail, as well as scrutiny of numerous stories that crumble on examination, he writes both credibly and broadly. He's informative without being stuffy and thorough without being boring.” —Vancouver Sun

“Nuanced and informative.” —Publishers Weekly

“U-Turn is a very smart, grounded, wise, well-written, and important book…Here is a map that offers guidance to anyone tempted to take a detour en route to who-knows-where.” —Parker J. Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach

“In his fascinating, balanced, thoroughly researched and readable look at the ‘U-turn,' Bruce Grierson gives this phenomenon its due. His view of the ‘wake-up call' as the secular equivalent of the religious epiphany is brilliant…this book is essential for anyone contemplating meaningful change.” —Jon Katz, author of Running to the Mountain and A Good Dog

“Read this book for the tales it tells, for the inspiration it imparts, or for the knowledge it so generously gives.” —Lauren Slater, author of Welcome to My Country

From the Publisher

Rarely can a writer capture the complex and often times inchoate process of change, whether on a large sweeping scale, or at the level on which a single individual lives his or her life. In this book, however, Bruce Grierson has accomplished just such a feat, illuminating for the reader the basic who what why and where's of the sudden shifts few of us have the courage to make. U-Turn is a map of transformation; it tells the extraordinary tales of individuals who have made extraordinary, Kierkegardian leaps of faith, leaps accompanied with Kierkegardian anxiety, which makes the leapers only braver, and that much more inspiring. You can read this book for the tales it tells, for the inspiration it imparts, or for the knowledge it so generously gives.

author of Opening Skinner's Box and Welcome to My Lauren Slater