Bruce Feiler

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Bruce Feiler
Bruce Feiler.jpg
Born (1964-10-25) October 25, 1964 (age 59)
Education Savannah Country Day School; Yale University B.A. 1987; Cambridge University MPhil International Relations 1991
Occupation(s)Writer, journalist, television host
Notable credit(s)Author of fifteen books; writer-presenter of the PBS miniseries Walking the Bible and Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler; creator of Council of Dads; credited with formulating the Feiler gaster thesis
Spouse Linda Rottenberg
Children2
Website www.brucefeiler.com

Bruce Feiler (born October 25, 1964) is an American writer and television personality. He is the author of 15 books, including The Council of Dads , a book that describes how he responded to a diagnosis of a rare cancer by asking a group of men to be present in the lives of his young daughters. The book was the subject of a TED Talk and inspired NBC drama series Council of Dads. [1] His latest work explores the power of life stories. Drawing on interviews with Americans in all 50 states, he offers strategies for coping with life's unsettling times in his new book, Life Is In The Transitions. [2] Bruce writes the "This Life" column in the Sunday New York Times and is also the writer/presenter of the PBS miniseries Walking the Bible and Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler (2014). [3]

Contents

Career

Feiler is credited with formulating the Feiler faster thesis: [4] the increasing pace of society and journalists' ability to report it is matched by the public's desire for more information.

Publications he has written for include The New Yorker , The New York Times Magazine , and Gourmet , [5] where he won three James Beard Awards. [6] He is also a contributor to National Public Radio, CNN, and Fox News.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, where he attended the Savannah Country Day School, Feiler lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their twin daughters. [7]

Feiler completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University where he was a member of Ezra Stiles College, before spending time teaching English in Japan as part of the JET Program. This experience led to his first book, Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan, a portrait of life in a small Japanese town. Upon his return he earned a master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, which he chronicled in his book Looking for Class.

Works

Feiler is the author of Life Is In The Transitions, a book that suggests strategies for transforming life's turbulent moments into periods of creativity and growth. [8] Informed by the sifting and coding of life story interviews across America, Feiler examines what gives our lives meaning. Adam Grant called the book, published in May 2020, one of "The 20 New Leadership Books for 2020". [9]

In The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More Feiler drew up a blueprint for modern families — a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military.

A story he wrote about the book for the New York Times, called The Stories that Bind Us discussed how the more children know about their family history, the higher their well-being and resilience. The piece was on the most-emailed list for a month. Feiler also did a TED talk about the book.

Walking the Bible describes his 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. The book was hailed as an "instant classic" by The Washington Post and "thoughtful, informed, and perceptive" by The New York Times . [10] It spent more than a year and a half on The New York Times best-seller list, has been translated into fifteen languages, and is the subject of a children's book and a photography book. [11]

In The Council of Dads: A Story of Family, Friendship & Learning How to Live, Feiler describes how, after learning he had a seven-inch osteosarcoma in his left femur, he asked six men from all passages of his life to be present through the passages of his young daughters' lives. "I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives", he wrote these men. "They'll have loving families. They'll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?"[ citation needed ]

The book was featured on the cover of USA Weekend , [12] on The Today Show , [13] and in People . Dr. Sanjay Gupta made a documentary about the story on CNN. [14] Feiler began an initiative with 23andMe to decode the genome of patients with primary bone cancers. His story inspired the NBC drama series Council of Dads . [15]

Abraham recounts Feiler's search for the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The book was featured on the cover of Time magazine, was a New York Times best-seller. [16]

Where God Was Born describes Feiler's year-long trek retracing the Bible through Israel, Iraq, and Iran. America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story discusses the significance of Moses as a symbolic prophet throughout four-hundred years of American history. Both books were New York Times best-sellers. He also wrote about the role of Moses as a defining influence in American life, including the presidency of Barack Obama, in Time magazine. [17]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron</span> Prophet in the Abrahamic faiths

According to Abrahamic religions, Aaron was a prophet, a high priest, and the elder brother of Moses. Information about Aaron comes exclusively from religious texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bible</span> Collection of religious texts

The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures, some, all, or a variant of which are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. The Bible is an anthology originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, among other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.

The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Bible. It is a narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites leaving slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of their deity named Yahweh, who according to the story chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the legendary prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests" on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to conquer Canaan, which has earlier, according to the myth of Genesis, been promised to the "seed" of Abraham, the legendary patriarch of the Israelites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moses</span> Abrahamic prophet

Moses was a Hebrew teacher and leader considered the most important prophet in Judaism and one of the most important prophets in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. According to both the Bible and the Quran, Moses was the leader of the Israelites and lawgiver to whom the prophetic authorship of the Torah is attributed.

The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Torah</span> First five books of the Hebrew Bible

The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses by Christians. It is also known as the Written Torah in Rabbinical Jewish tradition. If meant for liturgic purposes, it takes the form of a Torah scroll. If in bound book form, it is called Chumash, and is usually printed with the rabbinic commentaries.

The First Book of Nephi: His Reign and Ministry, usually referred to as First Nephi or 1 Nephi, is the first book of the Book of Mormon, the sacred text of churches within the Latter Day Saint Movement, and one of four books with the name Nephi. First Nephi tells the story of his family's escape from Jerusalem prior to the exile to Babylon, struggle to survive in the wilderness, build a ship and sail to the "promised land," commonly interpreted by Mormons as the Americas. The book is composed of two intermingled genres; one a historical narrative describing the events and conversations that occurred and the other a recounting of visions, sermons, poetry, and doctrinal discourses as shared by either Nephi or Lehi to members of the family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremiah</span> Biblical prophet

Jeremiah, also called Jeremias or the "weeping prophet", was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah authored the book that bears his name, the Books of Kings and the Book of Lamentations, with the assistance and under the editorship of Baruch ben Neriah, his scribe and disciple.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. J. Jacobs</span> American journalist and author

Arnold Stephen Jacobs Jr., commonly called A.J. Jacobs is an American journalist, author, and lecturer best known for writing about his lifestyle experiments. He is an editor at large for Esquire and has worked for the Antioch Daily Ledger and Entertainment Weekly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Moses</span> Part of the scriptural canon of the LDS movement

The Book of Moses, dictated by Joseph Smith, is part of the scriptural canon for some denominations in the Latter Day Saint movement. The book begins with the "Visions of Moses", a prologue to the story of the creation and the fall of man, and continues with material corresponding to the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible's (JST) first six chapters of the Book of Genesis, interrupted by two chapters of "extracts from the prophecy of Enoch".

Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene H. Peterson</span> American translator (1932–2018)

Eugene Hoiland Peterson was an American Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author, and poet. He wrote over 30 books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award–winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, an idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and translation of the Bible into modern American English using a dynamic equivalence translation approach.

<i>Moses and Monotheism</i> 1939 book by Sigmund Freud

Moses and Monotheism is a 1939 book about the origins of monotheism written by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is Freud's final original work and it was completed in the summer of 1939 when Freud was, effectively speaking, already "writing from his death-bed." It appeared in English translation the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internal consistency of the Bible</span> Coherence and textual integrity

Disputes regarding the internal consistency and textual integrity of the Bible have a long history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bart D. Ehrman</span> American biblical scholar (born 1955)

Bart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mosaic authorship</span> Belief that the Torah was dictated to Moses by God

Mosaic authorship is the Judeo-Christian tradition that the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, were dictated by God to Moses. The tradition probably began with the legalistic code of the Book of Deuteronomy and was then gradually extended until Moses, as the central character, came to be regarded not just as the mediator of law but as author of both laws and narrative.

The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Rugrats Passover</span> 23rd episode of the 3rd season of Rugrats

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<i>The Council of Dads</i> (book) Book by Bruce Feiler

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Pascoe</span> Australian writer (born 1947)

Bruce Pascoe is an Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Pascoe identifies as Aboriginal. Since August 2020, he has been Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.

References

  1. Ausiello, Michael (May 12, 2019). "NBC Fall Schedule: Manifest Held for Midseason, Good Place 'Promoted'". TVLine. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  2. "Life Is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler: 9781594206825 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  3. "Walking the Bible". PBS . Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  4. "Kausfiles – Battles for the Vital Center!". Slate . March 10, 2000. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  5. "Archive of articles in Gourmet". Archived from the original on October 13, 2009. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
  6. "James Beard Foundation Awards archive=2010-04-30".
  7. "Bruce Feiler". Sacred Journeys With Bruce Feiler. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  8. "Life Is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler: 9781594206825 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  9. "The 20 New Leadership Books for 2020". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  10. Bernstein, Richard (April 4, 2001). "Books of the Times; Transformed on the Trail of the Patriarchs". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  11. "Official HarperCollins site" . Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  12. "It Takes a Village of Dads". Archived from the original on February 5, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
  13. "Interview with Matt Lauer". Archived from the original on May 2, 2010. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
  14. "What would you do if you thought you were going to die?". CNN. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
  15. "Patient-Driven Sarcoma Research - 23andMe".
  16. "Abraham – HarperCollins site" . Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  17. Feiler, Bruce (October 12, 2009). "How Moses Shaped America". Time . Archived from the original on October 5, 2009. Retrieved May 3, 2010.