Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen. – Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French writer and philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor.

The book I introduced you to last week – New York Times Best Seller, Tell My Sons, by Lt. Col. Mark Weber with David Murray – gained national fame as a powerful, inspiring memoir of an accomplished soldier who was also a husband and parent, facing terminal cancer. Words like heroism, courage, leadership, integrity, and discipline are typically used to describe Mark. He was a soldier’s soldier who used General Douglas MacArthur’s famous 1962 speech to West Point cadets to frame a message to beloved sons he would never see grow to adulthood.

Mark’s honesty inspires me. I therefore confess an embarrassing misstatement in Part One of my webcast, which went online at www.bookedwebcast.com on August 19th. I inadvertently demoted Mark to the rank of Lieutenant. In fact, Mark Weber earned his Lieutenant Colonel rank by serving the United States of America with great distinction, a fact I was well aware of. My error is herewith corrected.

While I’m in this introspective confessional mood, I wonder if book reviewers (myself included) are missing the opportunity to identify this gallant memoir as a wonderful love story. In focusing on Mark’s remarkable military life, are we failing to give enough credit to his remarkable military wife? The relationship between Mark and Kristin Weber was not easily navigated. Through recalled scenes that are, at times, funny, frightening, turbulent or deeply touching, Mark’s memoir captures what marriage is really like, and how we should re-think our role in that partnership because marriage matters. The insights about marriage that Mark learned and left for his sons in this book can serve all of us well. We also gain even more respect for the sacrifices military families make every day so their loved ones can serve our nation.

Part Two of my interview with Tell My Sons co-author David Murray goes online at www.bookedwebcast.com on Monday, August 26th at 8 PM, EST. We talk about what happened to Mark and his family after the book was published. You will learn insights that have not been revealed in any other interviews. You’ll also hear about David’s interesting, varied, sometimes quirky, very popular solo writing. You’ll come away from the show understanding why Mark chose David as his co-writer and what David learned from Mark during their collaboration on Tell My Sons. If you’ve missed Part One, you can find it in the Book●ed Archives on my website. When you visit the website, be sure to also check out the Book Excerpts page to read a sample of the book and find links to some of Mark Weber’s interviews.

“He fed his spirit with the bread of books.” That soulful sentiment comes from American poet Edwin Markham (1852 – 1940). By the time of his death,Markham amassed a huge library of 15000+ books. This collection was bequeathed to Wagner College’s Horrmann Library, at Staten Island, New York.

Most noted for his poem, The Man with the Hoe, Markham recognized the enduring power of books to transform us. Books are the repositories of the human spirit, a reflection of our complex selves, a roadmap connecting our past with our potential.

I’ve often heard writers say, “My book wrote itself. It started out as my concept but took on a life of its own.” Sometimes a character redirects the plot. Sometimes the plot morphs into something unexpected with a different denouement for a character. It’s as if a spirit speaks through the writer to tell a story that has to be told. In my own writing, that experience is felt as goosebumps, a tingling up my arms and across my shoulders, as if some other “presence” was slipping through me.

The phenomenon of a spirit directing a book is not restricted to the realm of fiction. This past week, author Sue Baugh’s interview on Book●ed told how her magnificent book, Echoes of Earth, went from a project to identify the earth’s oldest rocks to the revelation of how the origins of our planet exist in each of us today and what the earth can teach us. . . if we listen. You can find Sue’s interview in the Archives at www.bookedwebcast.com.

Tell My Sons by Lt. Col. Mark Weber, the next show on Book.ed, is another example of a book that had to be written. Mark Weber was “chosen” to write it. You may know of Mark and his amazing book through national interviews and news stories. Tell My Sons, an inspirational memoir with remarkable wisdom we can all apply to our own lives, made the NY Times Best Seller list. It has been acclaimed by such diverse, notable people as Mitch Albom (author of Tuesdays with Morrie), Walter Mondale (former U.S. VP), John Elway (Pro Football Hall of Fame), General Babakir Zibari (Iraq’s chief of defense), General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, retired; former director of the CIA) and actor Robin Williams, among many others.

Sadly, 41-year-old Mark Weber lost a valiant 3-year battle with cancer three days before Father’s Day this year. In his last year of life, Mark transformed his lifelong personal journals into Tell My Sons with the help of co-writer David Murray. With a devoted wife and three young, adoring sons, Mark had to choose how to spend his very limited time. I believe it was that “spirit” that worked through Mark, telling him he had a story that needed to be told. While Tell My Sons began as a legacy to Mark’s children, it took on a life of its own. We are all richer for that.

The spirit that worked through Mark to get a story told was severely challenged by his death since he was no longer available to promote the book. Out of sight, out of mind rules in the book world. But the spirit that worked through Mark isn’t giving up! Come watch my interview with Tell My Sons co-writer David Murray to hear the incredible back story of this transformative book. The interview goes online at www.bookedwebcast.com on Monday, August 19th at 8 PM, EST. In conjunction with the show, the Book Excerpts page at the Book●ed website offers links to see some of Mark Weber’s interviews.

If you’ve already read Tell My Sons, you will gain new appreciation for it after watching my interview with David Murray. And if you haven’t read the book yet, you will certainly want to!

“There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.” – Edwin Markham.

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.” This astute observation about time comes from a distant cousin of mine, Albert Einstein (yes, that Albert Einstein).

Time, that elusive man-made concept that confounds us! With a sense that time keeps gaining momentum, we often find ourselves looking in the rearview mirror of life, or preparing to meet a future rushing toward us. We seem to be losing the ability to live in the present and, with it, opportunities to use it well. Authors complain that it’s hard to find time to write while readers lament the lack of time to indulge in leisure reading.

Animals don’t care about time. Just think how your dog greets you the same when you walk through the front door, whether you’ve been away for five months or five minutes. Animals live in the present. So do children. But by the time we reach adulthood, humans measure everything in terms of time’s relationship to us — and there never seems to be enough of it.

Earth knows better. And, according to L. Sue Baugh, author of Echoes of Earth: Finding Ourselves in the Origins of the Planet, it has plenty to teach us — if we listen. What started out as an artistic project with colleague Lynn Martinelli to document the world’s oldest rock and mineral sites turned into an amazing 10-year journey that Sue shares in an interview on Book●ed, available starting Monday, August 12th at 8 PM (EST) at www.bookedwebcast.com.

A winner of the prestigious Nautilus Award, three Ben Franklin awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association, and the Next Generation Indie Book Award, Echoes of Earth will transform how you view time, our incredible planet, and your place on it. This gorgeously illustrated, scientifically grounded, lyrically expressed book is quite unlike any I’ve ever seen.

During my ½-hour interview with Sue, you’ll see some of the awesome sites she visited — the oldest and most remote places on earth. You’ll also hear some of her incredible adventures as “the power, clarity and beauty of those sites radically changed the course” of the book’s original goal.

The newest edition of Book●ed is shown on Watch Now and in the Archives, while all previous shows remain available in the Archives. And while you’re visiting the Book●ed website, check out the Book Excerpts page where you can purchase any book reviewed on my show. To find out more about Echoes of Earth, visit www.wildstonearts.com.