You Are Not Special

Starred review from April 7, 2014
Longtime high school English teacher McCullough scores an A+ with this volume for teens and parents. Rich in literary references and poetic in cadence, the author also offers plenty of hilarious and pointed comments on teens and today's society. The immediate inspiration for the book is the commencement address that McCullough gave at his high school in 2012. He coyly saves the speech itself until the afterword but readers need not worry. From the start, he examines the odd situation of teens who have every advantage but "t some level...understand you can't ride the chairlift and call yourself Edmund Hillary." Teens are cosseted by well-meaning parents and bombarded with the "nitwittery" of social media, notes McCullough, and generally so focused on collecting accolades and laurels to boost their chances of getting into college that they miss the point. According to the author, "these indulged kids, our kids, could be, should be part of the solution for a planet in sore need." As he wisely notes: "When at last the electricity in your few pounds of gelatinous stuff sputters out for good, that's that," thus all readers must take pleasure in this fleeting life. Agent: Amy Williams, McCormick & Williams.

December 1, 2013

In his commencement speech at Wellesley High School, where he teaches English, McCullough told graduating students they weren't special: "even if you're one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you." The speech went viral. Here McCullough expands on the idea that students should rethink the standard definition of success. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2014
The cult of exceptionalism, like celebrity worship, is draining us of our humanity and joy, suggests high school teacher McCullough, whose expertise comes from having nearly three decades of teaching experience and four children of his own. The author, son of the acclaimed historian, moves through the world with his eyes open, willingly empathetic to those deserving and dedicated to doing the right thing in all cases. In this book, an expansion of a 2012 commencement speech, he writes with crisp precision and light humor ("this was before Al Gore invented the Internet"). McCullough discusses the importance of authority figures' butting out, letting kids govern their engagement with life and learn through trial and error. As he notes, we all fail, but we must get up and get back into the scrum, not allowing our expectations to cripple us. "Parents, you see, are people, subject to self-doubt, who don't always have every answer, who are doing the best they can," he writes. "And we are only as happy, generally, as our least happy child, only as successful as our least successful child." McCullough ably conveys his genuine love of teaching, as well as its ups and downs, and demonstrates the significance of encouraging independence and the impulse to explore and take risks and discover those things that touch you deeply. He also digs into the perils of technology, "the breathless infatuation with hi-def, 3D, 5G, glued to the hand, glued to the ear, twenty-first-century cyber gee-whizzery." The author tackles big issues, such as gender and race, with searching sincerity, open-heartedness, and a deft, light touch. "I like to imagine," he writes, "[parents and teenagers] putting [this book] down...and reaching for another book, then maybe another, and, before long, getting up, heading out, taking great happy lungfuls of air, eager to do some good." Neither sage nor curmudgeon, McCullough is a thoughtful pre-Socratic without a schadenfreude-soaked bone in his body.

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