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    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Audiobook3 hours

    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey

    Written by A. J. Jacobs

    Narrated by A. J. Jacobs

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The idea was deceptively simple: New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected.

    Author A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee—and every other item in our lives—would not be possible without hundreds of people we usually take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truckers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds.

    By thanking these people face to face, Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs—his disposition is more Larry David than Tom Hanks—but he sets off on the journey on a dare from his son. And by the end, it’s clear to him that scientific research on gratitude is true. Gratitude’s benefits are legion: It improves compassion, heals your body, and helps battle depression.

    Jacobs gleans wisdom from vivid characters all over the globe, including the Minnesota miners who extract the iron that makes the steel used in coffee roasters, to the Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a moment, to the farmers in Colombia.

    Along the way, Jacobs provides wonderful insights and useful tips, from how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the few that go wrong. And how our culture overemphasizes the individual over the team. And how to practice the art of “savoring meditation” and fall asleep at night. Thanks a Thousand is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows us how much we take for granted. It teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder, and more impactful. And it will inspire us to follow our own “Gratitude Trails.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio / TED
    Release dateNov 13, 2018
    ISBN9781508267812
    Author

    A. J. Jacobs

    A.J. Jacobs is the author of Thanks a Thousand, It’s All Relative, Drop Dead Healthy, and the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and My Life as an Experiment. He is a contributor to NPR, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids. Visit him at AJJacobs.com and follow him on Twitter @ajjacobs.

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    Reviews for Thanks A Thousand

    4/5

    80 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Interesting view of the supply chain. Liked the narrative also.
    • 4/5
      The author’s in-depth at how deep and wide gratitude can run for one thing was well done and gives much to ponder about in one’s own daily dealings.
    • 5/5
      I love his sense of humor and I always learn something.
    • 4/5
      A great end of year read to start the new year remembering to be grateful for the large and small. Jacobs spent a year thanking everyone involved in getting his morning coffee to him, from the grower to the transporter to the barrista and everyone in between. Very enjoyable, quick read.
    • 5/5
      A short book worthy of the time spent. It reminds us of the interconnected world and thousands of people around the world that indirectly touch our lives. The world would be a much better place if all of us start the day off with a little gratitude!!
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this because it's such a great idea but I feel like something was missing. Maybe it was the lack of any sort of stakes for the author. To me it read like an expanded to-do list, ticking off people to thank.

      But I *love* the idea and I'm glad it's done - I just feel like something got lost in the translation because I just couldn't get invested in it. I suspect he had some trouble at times as well - especially toward the end where he didn't even know how many people he had thanked. 957? 1015? Oh I don't know, I'll call it 1000. Good enough. That feels like a metaphor for what I saw as the biggest shortcoming of the book.
    • 4/5
      I picked this up because I really like A.J. Jacobs' books. I love his sense of humour and the flashes of insights his examinations provide, both for him and for me! A look at the supply chain for a cup of coffee would be interesting on its own. This book provides that (at least a partial look), and also provides an examination of gratitude. How "thank you" has become largely perfunctory; how people react to being thanked and some of the moral or ethical issues around gratitude. As always, Mr. Jacobs' books make me think. And smile.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps A.J. Jacobs misread "gratitude journal" (a common thing nowadays) as "gratitude journey". Thus the idea for this book was born - and a pretty good book at that.
    • 4/5
      Books by A.J. Jacobs are fun to read and this book was no exception. In this book, Jacobs thanks a thousand people who are responsible for his morning cup of coffee. I'm glad he chose coffee because that was a subject to which I can well relate as I am a "coffee snob". I never stopped to realize the number of people who are responsible for the coffee I drink at least every morning, but in addition the topic of gratitude is on my mind a lot as I worry about the political situation in my country and worry about people who seem to completely lack any sense of gratitude. Hence this little book was very welcome in my reading list this month. At the end of this book is a list of the people whom the author thanks. I felt the most debt of gratitude to the farmers who actually raise the coffee beans, harvest them and send them to market. I also feel a great debt of gratitude to people within organizations who work for Fair trade practices and sustainable environmental practices. I think it's good to not take what we have for granted and this book is but a small example of a way to do just that.
    • 4/5
      A.J. Jacobs describes himself as "more Larry David than Tom Hanks" and he wanted to find a way to be less annoyed and more grateful, leading to the idea of this participatory memoir. It's an expanded version of his TED talk which readers might have seen. I too find I am annoyed a lot of the time and once I am annoyed, it's harder and harder to stop being annoyed by even the smallest of things, to just be happy with life. So I thought that following Jacobs on his "Gratitude Journey" to thank all the people who make his morning coffee, a necessity for so many people, possible would make Thanks a Thousand the perfect book to ring in my new year of reading.It is easy to be annoyed or angry over something. It is much harder to be grateful. And it might be hardest of all to be grateful for things we take for granted. It is this that drives Jacobs' interest in his quest. He wants to thank everyone for their contributions, from the big and obvious to the small and seemingly insignificant as he traces the origin of his coffee and all the things that allow it to journey from the coffee bean farmers to his own mouth. Jacobs manages to connect a whole host of people who we might not otherwise consider here, highlighting the absolute interconnectedness of all the businesses and people on the planet. In fact, he went so far down the rabbit hole looking into all the industries involved in a simple cup of coffee (he makes no mention of adding milk or sugar but that would just expand the scope exponentially I imagine) that he has to consciously restrict himself to thanking only 1000 people (more or less). His investigation into each aspect is by necessity not terribly in depth but it is enough for the layperson to understand the gist and to continue to be fascinated by all the places that Jacobs is taking them. The information made me appreciate all of the moving parts that absolutely anything takes (especially the usually overlooked bits) but the push to recognize people's contributions and the gratitude those contributions inspired were definitely thought provoking. Even as a non-coffee drinker, I found this to be a quick and fascinating read, and one with which I am happy to have started my year.
    • 4/5
      3.5 An expanded version of a TED talk given by this author. Was attracted to it for two reasons. I have decided I the coming year to try to focus more on things on the outside instead of always looking inward. This is sometimes hard to do when one has various medical issues and chronic pain. I want to try focusing on what I do have as opposed to what I don't. We will see how that goes, but I'm hopeful. The second reason is simply that I'm a coffee addict and I was curious how far the author would take this.I enjoyed the way this was written for the most part. Loved the self deprecating humor, his flashes of intuition, and many of his examples. I had no idea how many people it took down the line for me to get a cup of coffee. He listed them, and showed their illustrated faces. Amazing! Don't think I'll look at an item I use daily without realizing all the effort it took for it to come into my hands. At least short term, lol! He did mention one thing that I realized myself. How thank you has just become something to say to be polite, rote. Saying your grateful is more expressive and thought provoking. Though some people might look at you funny if you tell the bigger at your grocery that you are deeply grateful. So all in all, though it did drag in a few places, this was an interesting book.