Conversations with Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Prize Winner, Holocaust survivor, and author of more than 40 books, has something to say about almost everything. Conversations with Elie Wiesel, containing highlights from more than 20 television interviews with journalist Richard D. Heffner, gathers some of Wiesel's best thoughts on subjects such as "The Intellectual in Public Life," "On Being Politically Correct" "Religion, Politics... and Tolerance." The book has a few broad, unifying themes--most notably the dynamics of individual and community responsibility, and the proper role of the state in our lives. But Conversations contains no sustained arguments. It is, instead, the record of a mind in action--the passionate thoughts of a person whose confidence in the significance of his own life is the ground of his generosity towards others:

I have the feeling, honestly, that my life is an offering. I could have died every minute between '44 and '45. So once I have received this gift, I must justify it. And the only way to justify life is by affirming the right to life of anyone who needs such affirmation.

--Michael Joseph Gross