Author Description

Havel has never played by the rules of the game -- not as a dissident imprisoned under Czechoslovakia's communist regime and not as president of the Czech Republic... The Art of the Impossible is no ordinary, collection of political speeches. Better to think of it as a collection of Vaclav Havel's conversations with himself, Which he has graciously, if tentatively, decided to share with the rest of us... Like his American predecessor Thomas Jefferson. Vaclav Havel is a politician with the soul of a writer and a writer with the savvy of a politician... The speech Havel delivered un 1991 after receiving the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen is a model of applied moral philosophy and practical wisdom that should be required reading for anyone who holds political office (or just works for someone who does)... Like the samizdat smuggled to the East during the Cold War, Havel's speeches have the power to sustain hope and inspire action even when the prospects of success seem dim. Read them. Pass them on.