Non-Fiction
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Last Lecture | 2008 | Buy |
Randy Pausch was a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who gave a famous lecture in September 2007 titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. The lecture went viral online. The Last Lecture (2008), co-written with Jeffrey Zaslow, expanded the talk into a bestselling book about life lessons, childhood dreams, and making the most of limited time. Pausch died in July 2008.
The book covers Pausch’s childhood ambitions, from experiencing weightlessness on NASA’s reduced-gravity aircraft to working as a Disney Imagineer. He writes about the people who influenced him and the lessons he wanted to pass on to his three young children. The tone is practical rather than sentimental.
The Last Lecture has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide. The original lecture video has been viewed tens of millions of times. Pausch was a specialist in virtual reality and human-computer interaction, and his academic work at Carnegie Mellon continues to influence the field.