Mitch Albom was a journalist in the 1990s when he wrote the breakout book of his career, his memoir Tuesdays With Morrie. He’s gone on to write plenty of other successful books (for example, you can find my review of The Little Liar), but Tuesdays with Morrie remains the timeless classic that readers always return to.

When Mitch graduated from college in the 1970s, he vowed to remain close with his favorite sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz. However, life happens, and he found himself drifting apart from the professor he had lovingly looked up to over the years. While flipping through TV channels years later, he recognizes Morrie and discovers that his old professor is being interviewed about his experience with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

ALS is a progressive disease of the nervous system that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to the loss of muscular function. For Morrie, this means giving up his love of dancing, losing much of his bodily function, and having to rely on others to help him complete regular, everyday tasks (he speaks about the fear of eventually needing someone else to wipe him, for example). Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, this is the fatal condition that benefited from the “Ice Bucket Challenge” back when I was in high school.

Mitch decides to rekindle his relationship with Morrie and spend time talking about the philosophy of life with him every Tuesday. For the remainder of Morrie’s life, Mitch is there to hear every bit of wisdom Morrie is willing to impart to him as his last lecture to the world.

It is reminiscent of Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture, which is one of the greatest books I’ve ever recommended.

If you knew you had a limited amount of time left on this earth, what would you do with it? The inevitability of death lingering over Morrie allows him to be fully authentic in the things he talks about, and there’s a certain beauty about that which I think we take for granted in day-to-day life. If there’s nothing left to lose, one can really live with authenticity.