Pedagogical autobiographies are difficult to write. Using their life experience, the authors generally promulgate a set of rules or principles for an effective life that they have learned to embrace and then give the reader examples of how others have used these insights to better themselves and their communities. Done well, books of this sort can be truly educational. Done less well, they can easily veer towards auto-hagiography and become monuments to self-absorption and self-centeredness.
Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, by Charles Koch, and Lessons From the Least of These: The Woodson Principles, by Robert Woodson, illustrate both the value and risks of this genre. Both authors are successful men in their 80s with rich and challenging careers behind them. Koch is a corporate leader who has invested much of his wealth in politics, policy reform, and social entrepreneurship. Woodson, the founder of the Woodson Center, is a lifelong social entrepreneur who has championed a grassroots approach to overcoming the challenges of crime, drug abuse, and other actions that beset poor communities. Each is now sharing his accumulated wisdom about how to make America a better place.
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