Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers by Nick Offerman

I really enjoyed listening to Nick Offerman's first book, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living, and was looking forward to his second book with a great deal of anticipation. I was not disappointed.

In this book Offerman talks about gumption:  combination of hard work, courage, and a willingness to go down the less travelled road. It began in an almost expected way--with several of the Founding Fathers. What made his biographical sketches of them different were the way he told these stories and his own particular interpretations of their lives and the lessons he learned from them. Offerman is a great story teller. And while he takes himself lightly, he does not take his message lightly: that an intrinsic quality of the American character is the willingness to go against the grain and to do your own thing. More than that, though, to do it well enough that you can make enormous change--whether this is what you set out to do or not.

The book was idiosyncratic in that, after some of the expected historical figures (Washington, Franklin, Madison) and moving to other, less expected, figures (Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt) his list becomes much more personal. I was introduced to historical figures I had not heard of and contemporary Americans--some known to me, some not. All these stories were told with a dry wit and wry humor that stayed on message.

I have often thought that many of the best comedians were also philosophers. That they spread the world views of their philosophies with humor to help the medicine go down. Offerman is in this vein. He has a philosophy of life that he is passionate about. It includes such attributes as individualism, working hard at work worth doing, perseverance, a fierce defense of our American right to be who we want to be, and a fiercer belief that government should stay out of our private lives and decisions, but be there to help those who need it.

This is all told in an extremely amusing way that kept me listening raptly. While I won't be putting this book in my seventh grade classroom library (there is some language in there that would get me fired), I do not hesitate to recommend it to older teens and to grown folks. This is not just the usual historical subjects. It is worth noting that while I did indeed learn a lot from the book, it was at no time pedantic or boring. This is something the best teachers strive for and that Offerman delivers.