Humans by Brandon Stanton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a book that I wish I could give to each of my friends and family. My heart has been touched, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried at the 400 or so amazing, tender stories presented here. Some folks might remember the work of Studs Terkel, an oral historian whose books of interviews with ordinary people telling of the Depression of the 1930s, on soldiering in our wars, and on working life were excerpted in Readers Digest and hit the bestseller lists in the 1970s-90s. These snapshots of regular people going about their lives and the words that accompany them are the closest thing I’ve seen to another body of work that celebrates our common humanity.
Brandon started out telling the stories of people he met on the streets of New York City, and then was able to travel around the world to over forty different countries. His work’s been such a hit because it’s both surprising and comforting to enter the lives of strangers. Stylish people who are deserts inside, homeless people whose hopes rise high: no matter people’s faces, no matter their ages, no matter the country they’re in—no matter what people seem to be like from the outside, our insides are all the same: various degrees of love, fear, judgement, wonder, grief, certainty, hope, despair, confusion.
Some of the stories I relate to so much; some make me sad or angry, others make me grateful for my own road taken. People talk about their pets, their relationships—or lack thereof—their joys, their sorrows; their childhoods, children, parents, schools, jobs; their opportunities and life losses. In this wide world, we’re each alone—and yet we’re all connected through shared experiences, through shared stories. All the friends we’ve known were just faces to us once, until we knew their stories. It’s curiously joyful—at the end of this awful year, in the season of love and new beginnings—to acknowledge that despite all the beliefs that divide us, we all have more in common than we fear in this fraught and changing world.
The coffee-table size book is good to be dipped into at random, savored in pieces or gulped wholesale, however you care to; it’s just a bit heavy for arthritic hands. It’s on sale at many retailers and I highly recommend this glimpse into the common soul of humanity.

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