40 pages • 1 hour read
David Von DrehleThe Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaThemes
Positivity and Persistence
Von Drehle connects White’s positive mindset to his ability to persist through challenge. According to Von Drehle, these traits helped White overcome obstacles. They created success and happiness in his personal and professional life, making him a role model.
Von Drehle includes numerous anecdotes which demonstrate White’s positive attitude and how it helped him identify solutions to his problems. For instance, as a youth stranded in California, a determined White decided that he could hop trains all the way home. In spite of the danger and inconvenience of such a method, White’s good spirits helped him to both cope with and enjoy the experience of traveling perched on train cars. Von Drehle writes: “The boys must have known that beyond that scene their journey would have its drab denouement amid scrub and prairie […] For that glorious moment they were brother knights of a splendid kingdom. ‘Well now, what could be more luxurious?’ said Charlie to Ed, or Ed to Charlie. We have a car all to ourselves’” (74).
White’s positivity was also essential to White’s survival during the Great Depression. While he easily could have been distraught about his poverty and low pay, White chose to see his job as a calling rather than a mere paid profession, allowing him to overcome his circumstances and treat his patients. Von Drehle explains: “Charlie insisted whenever we talked about those days that he didn’t care: he went into medicine as a calling, not to get rich. That didn’t make those times any easier, though. He estimated that roughly 40 percent of his calls were never paid for in any form—neither cash nor barter” (117).
White’s optimism helped him make major transitions when his career required it. After only a decade as a practicing doctor, most of White’s training was suddenly irrelevant as new inventions and antibiotics changed the medical field overnight. However, he embraced these changes and committed himself to learning about the new discoveries that were reshaping his profession. Von Drehle explains: “Just like that, Charlie had turned the threat of change into an opportunity to grow […] To me, this episode contains the essence of Charlie’s life. Realism and optimism fit together powerfully” (141).
At the end of his life, White reminisced on how his positive outlook served him over the years, and advised younger people to “work through it, and hold the line, and don’t fall apart. Stick in there. There’s no future in negativism” (188). Whether he was train-hopping, making house calls, or retraining in his job, White’s positive mindset helped him to persist through all kinds of challenges. Von Drehle uses White’s example, encouraging the reader to persist with positivity: “Charlie insisted on the joyful version of life, and I believe it made him a happier person” (74).
The Importance of Personal Agency
Von Drehle exhorts the reader to use their personal agency to shape their life for the better, just as Charlie White did. Throughout his life, White was adept at taking initiative and creating opportunities for himself, a tactic which built his confidence and skills.
Von Drehle argues that White’s experience of losing his father at the age of eight made him keenly aware of which aspects of his life were, and were not, within his control. By making small, conscious decisions for himself, a young White claimed control over what he could: He contributed to the household, slept on the porch for fun, and later planned an adventure with his friends. Von Drehle asserts that this shows White’s grasp of an “existential truth,” that directing your agency into conscious choices, no matter how seemingly trivial, builds confidence and resilience over time (34). Von Drehle writes: “In the grip of depression or anxiety, any affirmative step is better than paralysis. Action promotes more action; decision produces decision; living generates life” (34).
White’s ability to channel his agency into productive decisions helped him enormously at several key moments of his life. For instance, as a penniless student he decided to take up the saxophone so he could start a band and collect an income by playing for dances. Since he couldn’t afford lessons, he taught himself by playing along to the radio. White explained that he had to rely on his creative thinking to get by: “When you don’t have an income, you create. You find a job” (82). By using his agency to create his own opportunity, White was able to pay his way through college.
When he graduated, however, he was faced with another hurdle: a rejection from medical school. White’s strong sense of initiative helped him again, in a bold move that the author calls “pure Charlie White” (99). Instead of giving up, White showed up unannounced at the dean’s office, surprising the dean and persuading him of why he was deserving of a spot at the school. To Von Drehle, this shows that everyone is their own “best advocate,” and that White’s confident assertion of personal agency secured him a life-changing opportunity (100).
Von Drehle connects personal agency to the ability to see the big picture while taking action in the small picture. Von Drehle argues that little, everyday choices are just as important as life-changing decisions, and that everyone can improve their lives by focusing on taking baby steps. He explains:
For people trying to thrive in uncertainty, iterative and incremental development is a consolation. It says, don’t try to solve everything. Stop demanding answers to every question about your life and career. Look instead for a small step forward. Just answer the next question. Find the next step. And take it (163).
He illustrates how Charlie White’s decisions, both life-changing and mundane, shaped his life for the better. In this way, he encourages the reader to consider how they can embrace their own personal agency.
Stoic Principles in Everyday Life
Von Drehle grounds White’s life story and wisdom in Western philosophical traditions, with a particular focus on Stoicism. By connecting White’s experiences to this philosophy, Von Drehle aims to add gravitas to his book’s life lessons, offering what he considers universal truths.
Throughout the book, Von Drehle argues that White embodied important Stoic principles. The first was courage. Von Drehle asserts that “without fear, there is no courage” (134). White experienced anxiety and apprehension in dangerous or risky situations, but did not allow these feelings to control his response. In doing so, he embodied this Stoic virtue. Von Drehle lauds White’s ability to overcome reluctance and find the courage to make bold choices—“again and again Charlie’s impulse was to push past whatever natural fears he might have to take action and seize opportunity” (131). For instance, after a man was shot in the streets in Chicago, White tried to save the man’s life by starting a blood transfusion—using himself as the blood donor. While this was not successful, White had tried his best, and was rewarded by the man’s girlfriend for his efforts.
Later in life, White was faced with the dilemma to stay in Kansas City and continue his practice or move away to work for the Army. He made the choice to leave his established life behind and embrace a new chapter in his career, in spite of the risk of losing his clients and home. Von Drehle explains: “Charlie had no employer to return to […] he would be right back where he started, rebuilding from nothing […] So we see that Charlie was risking his life, in a sense, risking the life he had built for himself” (132).
Another Stoic virtue is learning to love one’s own fate, by accepting events as they occur and maintaining a positive mindset during difficult times. Von Drehle quotes Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “Love the hand that fate deals you, and play it as your own” (14). According to Von Drehle, White had an instinctive knack for doing this; he was able to focus on making the best choices available to him, even when he was suffering through hard times. Von Drehle writes: “You can’t change what was, or entirely control what will be […] I think Charlie learned the essence of it in a single day and never forgot” (15).
White faced several tragedies and misfortunes in his life, such as the loss of his father and wife Mildred, but he did not let his grief overwhelm him. Instead, his understanding of loss and recovery became a “resource he would tap through a lifetime of setbacks and losses” (43). By reacting to both opportunity and adversity with courage and initiative, White applied the most famous Stoic virtues in his everyday life.
