The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey from Evil Toward Good

Georgescu graduated from Exeter Academy, then Princeton, then Stanford Business School. His first—and last—job was with Young & Rubicam, from researcher to CEO of the marketing company. But as a boy in the early 1950s, he hacked “poopsicles” out of the frozen sewers of Romania, forced to labor under communism’s wintry rule. Across his life’s rags-to-riches range, Georgescu has struggled “to understand why evil pervades so much of human behavior.” What makes a Madoff rather than a Mandela? What is God’s role in the existence of evil in the world, from the Holocaust to the killing fields, from overt Darfur to covert bullies? As Georgescu searches for answers, his image of God changes from the bearded, prayer-granting dad in the sky to a neuter, benevolent force, offering each and every person, no matter the religion, a constant choice for goodness. In Georgescu’s conversational style, horrors of the past are counterpointed with his invigorating retreats to Chautauqua (N.Y.) Institution. His stories are informal, rather than crisply edited, with modifiers occasionally dangling. (Jan. 29)