Years ago, one of my children gave me a book by Scott Russell Sanders called Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys, published in 1998. Recently, I stumbled on it, drawn to it one might argue, in the cubby where I toss things and forget about them. I took it with me on a trip to Seattle and started reading it on the plane. I couldn’t stop.

I have been reading furiously and ferociously since my sophomore year in college (1960); and, never before, not a single book for pleasure, not once—and I read a few books a week, so maybe 3 X 52 X 54 = >7,500 books for pleasure in my adult life—have I read anything that moved me so deeply.

It’s a beautiful book about the values that matter. It’s wonderfully written, and it’s a book that we all ought to give to our kids. I wrote all over my copy and bought another for our family’s shared Kindle account with a note to my kids: Read this book now. It is the message I would have given you had I been the writer Scott is.

Hunting for Hope is simply the most decent and loving thing I have ever read. It sets for us all how to live in this world in which so much is wrong and so few people have their fair share. Most important, it inspires hope, from start to finish.