Will Schwalbe Quote
But the thing that made it most interesting is what it had to say about books and religion. I love how Brooks shows that every great religion shares a love of books, of reading, of knowledge. The individual books may be different, but reverence for books is what we all have in common. Books are what bring all the different people in the novel together, Muslims and Jews and Christians. That’s why everyone in the book goes to such lengths to save this one book—one book stands for all books. When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.
But the thing that made it most interesting is what it had to say about books and religion. I love how Brooks shows that every great religion shares a love of books, of reading, of knowledge. The individual books may be different, but reverence for books is what we all have in common. Books are what bring all the different people in the novel together, Muslims and Jews and Christians. That’s why everyone in the book goes to such lengths to save this one book—one book stands for all books. When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.
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About Will Schwalbe
His first book, SEND: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better, was co-written with David Shipley, and was published by Penguin Random House in 2010. The book was reviewed by Dave Barry in The New York Times, became a business bestseller and was included in an interview with Schwalbe on The Colbert Report in June 2007.
The End of Your Life Book Club, which described Schwalbe's relationship with his mother Mary Anne Schwalbe through books before her death, was published by Knopf in 2012, and spent more than four months on the New York Times Bestseller List. It was widely reviewed by outlets such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today, Chicago Reader, The New Yorker, Bookpage, and Entertainment Weekly.
As a journalist, he has written for various publications, including The New York Times and South China Morning Post.
Books for Living was published in December 2016 by Knopf, and consists of essays about 26 different books that affected the author's life. The Boston Globe described it as a "natural follow-on" to his previous book. Among the books described by Schwalbe include, Homer's The Odyssey, Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, E. B. White's Stuart Little and Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train.
His sister, Nina Schwalbe, is an American public health researcher.