Laugh and Live
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy early twentieth-century American popular inspirational writing
- Film fans interested in the public image of silent-film stars and the mindset of the era
- Office workers who need light emotional encouragement and prefer short-form reading
- General readers studying inspirational English public-domain texts
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking systematic psychological theory or clinical advice
- Film historians expecting biographical details about Fairbanks
- Readers sensitive to outdated value expressions and demanding a contemporary perspective
Reading tips
- Read one short section a day and apply one optimistic action suggestion to a specific task that day.
- While reading, note expressions marked by their era and distinguish general life attitudes from outdated notions.
- Read alongside background material on the silent-film era to understand the relationship between the author's public image and the text's tone.
- Treat it as light reading rather than a psychological self-help manual, and avoid copying the book's examples wholesale.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Is this book an autobiography by Douglas Fairbanks?
Can the advice in the book be used directly as psychological self-help methods?
How difficult is the original English edition to read?
Comments
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About the author
Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939) was a leading American actor of the silent-film era, best known for starring in adventure films such as Robin Hood and The Iron Mask, and celebrated on screen for his athletic agility and vitality. Two of his works are included here: Laugh and Live and Making Life Worth While. As the titles suggest, both books center on an optimistic, positive attitude toward life and lean toward inspirational essays, echoing the enterprising image he built on screen. Public information on the circumstances of their writing, their composition, and their reception is limited, making a detailed account difficult. On the whole, Fairbanks is first and foremost a well-known figure in film history; his written works are few and focus on meeting life with optimism, and may be seen as an extension of his public persona, offering some insight into the tone and interests of early twentieth-century American inspirational reading.
