In this follow-up to his best seller Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have, renowned author and Ole Miss graduate James A. Autry joins his wife Sally J. Pederson for a year of gratefulness. Each devotion challenges us to see a source of gratefulness amidst the normal, burdensome circumstances of life. As the year progresses, we are let into Jim and Sally’s lives, their trips to visit family, the blessings of their sons and friends. They remind us of things that happened last week or a month ago, even the weather, and so we are looped into the confidence of wise friends who really as the most positive, grateful people we would ever hope to meet. We want to be more grateful as we want to be more honest, more courageous, more generous. Each month, Jim and Sally highlight an added virtue to direct us on our guide to grateful living. Filled with quotes, poems, and the inspired voices of both Pederson and Autry, in a society consumed by fears of not having “enough”—money, possessions, security, and so on—this book suggests that if we cultivate gratitude as a way of being, we may not change the world and its ills, but we can change our response to the world.
James A. Autry, a former Fortune 500 executive, is an author, poet, and consultant whose work has had significant influence on leadership thinking. He is the author of ten books, and his writings have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Featured in Bill Moyers’ PBS series The Power of the Word and in Moyers’ book The Language of Life, Autry has also been noted on National Public Radio via Garrison’s Keillor’s “Writer’s Corner.” He serves on the national advisory board of Poets & Writers, Inc. Autry resides in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife, Sally Pederson, who recently retired as Lieutenant Governor of Iowa, and their twenty-seven-year-old son. He has two grown sons by a previous marriage and is a proud grandfather of two.
Sally J. Pederson is an advocate for children and adults with disabilities and a voice for progressive causes. She served as Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 1999 to 2007 and is a former editor with Better Homes & Gardens magazine, where she met and married the love of her life, Jim Autry. This is her first book.
