A Shout-out to Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work.
The book Callings (edited by David Isay, published by Penguin, 2016) is, in essence, a guidebook about how to talk with the people who have made a difference in our lives. In some of your classes this semester and next, your professors will be using parts of the book Callings , which is the NCC Common Text for the 2020/2021 academic year. Callings is a collection of 53 interviews collected in five different chapters: “Dreamers,” “Generations,” “Healers,” “Philosophers” and “Groundbreakers.” Callings is subtitled “The Purpose and Passion of Work,” so the interviews have a united focus in exploring career choices that folks make. But what sets these interviews apart are the deeply personal relationships that are explored between interviewer and interviewee in discussing issues surrounding work. In many cases in the collection we have a child (or a grandchild) interviewing a parent (or grandparent). And there is love and caring in the conversations presented. For example, in one exch