In this riveting discussion, Laurence shares his father's incredible story of survival from World War II. This led him to become a subject matter expert on survival. What separates survivors from victims? Are there secrets in the stories of survivors that can help all of us survive everyday life? We will explore all of this and more.
Show notes:
Laurence Gonzales is the author of numerous books and has won many awards, including two National Magazine Awards and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He was also awarded the Montaigne Medal from the Eric Hoffer Society in 2018 and won the Eric Hoffer Award in both 2018 and 2019.
After reading in neuroscience for several years, he wrote the best-selling book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why and its sequel Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience, which attempt to answer related questions about how people make bad decisions and what leads some of them to survive and some to perish.
His most recent non-fiction book is Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, a detailed reconstruction of the crash of a fully-loaded DC-10. It was adapted for the stage by The House Theater of Chicago and played to sold-out houses and rave reviews in both 2016 and 2017. It also had successful runs in both Boulder, Colorado, and Miami, Florida.
For more than a decade and a half, he has appeared as a featured speaker before groups ranging from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to Exxon-Mobil, and from the Wilderness Medical Society to the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His most recent novel is Lucy (Alfred A. Knopf). His essays are collected in the book House of Pain (University of Arkansas Press). In the past he has served on the adjunct faculty at Northwestern University in the Medill School of Journalism, where he taught writing.
"Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why"
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Survival-Who-Lives-Dies/dp/0393353710
"Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience"
"Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival"
