Context first, because it explains how this audiobook is put together. Norman Vincent Peale spent fifty-two years as pastor of Manhattan's Marble Collegiate Church, watched its membership climb from six hundred to more than five thousand, ran a radio program for over half a century, and wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, the book that reached millions. The True Joy of Positive Living is his own account of all of it, running thirteen hours and thirty-three minutes, released by Audible Studios in November 2015 with Robert Feifar reading. The interesting problem sitting underneath that credit is that the man at the center built his reputation on how he sounded.
From a Small Ohio Town to the Medal of Freedom
Devotion is the register of the review column, and the May 2017 tribute sets the terms honestly. That reviewer, who gives Peale's dates as 1898 to 1993, is convinced in advance that any book he wrote will rank among the best they have ever read, and says so openly before assessing this one. What follows is still worth having: the autobiography gives a full view of the man's life and work and explains his commitment to bettering the lives of others, which is a fair description of what thirteen and a half hours delivers. Taking the enthusiasm at a discount does not empty out the observation underneath it.
Forward motion is what makes the life work aloud. Peale starts poor in a small Midwestern town, the son of a minister in Lynchburg, Ohio, and finishes with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, handed over by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Between those two points sit the pulpit, the radio, the magazine, the Peale Center for Christian Living founded with Ruth, and the bestseller that made the name a household one. Told in his own words, the account never hardens into a catalog of achievements, because each stage arrives as a problem that had to be solved rather than a prize that was collected.
Feifar Voices a Man Whose Method Was Vocal
Instruction is part of the appeal, and the May 2019 summary names the three things the book delivers: informative, inspirational, educational. That response points at what a listener genuinely takes away from decades of service, from years on public platforms, and from a life spent in the middle of American religious broadcasting. The claim is modest and it is accurate. This is not a self-help book with a program attached; it is the story of how the program came to exist, which is a different proposition and in some ways a more useful one. Thirteen hours and thirty-three minutes is a lot of room for a memoir of this kind, and the space goes into institutional detail that shorter inspirational books leave out entirely: how a congregation actually grows, what a weekly broadcast demands of the person making it.
Robert Feifar has an unusual assignment on this title. Peale's influence rested on delivery: a voice on the radio for more than fifty years, a pulpit every week, a manner that persuaded enormous numbers of people that their thinking could be changed. Reading that autobiography means voicing a man whose entire method was vocal, in a text that keeps handing his own sermons and broadcasts back to the listener. Sustained address at that length is a real demand, and the casting question it raises is one worth thinking about before you buy rather than at the halfway mark.
Three Products Stacked Under a Single Score
Look at the one-star response before anything else, because it is not about this book in any sense that matters. Filed in April 2012, more than three years before the recording existed, it describes ordering the title and receiving a volume measuring two inches by two inches, digging around in the box for the real thing, and calling six dollars wasted. A novelty miniature edition, reviewed as though it were the work itself. That single response also drags the visible average down to 4.2, while the page displays 4.6 across thirty ratings. A low score on a listing like this one is often measuring a package rather than a book, and it is worth checking which before you let it change your mind.
Older still is the response from October 2003, twelve years ahead of this recording, which quotes Peale from page 23 on the powerful effect one's thinking has on the ability to perform, praises an early section on the power of writing and reading, and cites a line about divine guidance from page 120. Page numbers are the tell. What has happened on this listing is that three products have been stacked under a single score: a standard printed edition, a two-inch novelty, and a thirteen-and-a-half-hour recording that two of the five responses predate outright.
American Religious History, Narrated by the Man Who Lived It
Readers who already know the Peale of the bestsellers are the natural audience, and the November 2022 remark puts the appeal in a single line: it is a pleasure to see the heart of the man who helped so many people, and the surprise is that the autobiography outshines the publications. That is the right expectation to arrive with. If The Power of Positive Thinking shaped how you or a parent thought about work and worry, this is the account of the life that produced it, told at a scale that makes room for the ordinary years as well as the famous ones. Publisher copy calls it a stirring chronicle of an extraordinary soul, which is marketing language, though the underlying claim about the scale of the life holds up perfectly well.
Reach for it also if you want twentieth-century American religious history from the inside, since the growth of a congregation from six hundred to five thousand, the arrival of radio and then television, and the founding of a magazine are all narrated by the person who did them. Skip ahead to the method books if techniques are what you need, because this is not one of them and never pretends to be. And weigh the register before committing: the uplift is unbroken by design, which is either the reason to spend thirteen hours here or the reason not to.
A Few Questions About The True Joy of Positive Living
Is The True Joy of Positive Living audiobook the same as The Power of Positive Thinking?
No. The Power of Positive Thinking is the technique book that made Peale famous; this is the autobiography, telling the story of the life that surrounded it. Expect the church, the radio program, the magazine and the family rather than a set of exercises. The two work well taken in that order.
Who narrates the audiobook, and how long is it?
Robert Feifar reads it, and Audible Studios released the recording in November 2015 at thirteen hours and thirty-three minutes. That is a substantial commitment for an autobiography, and the length goes on a ninety-five-year life spanning a small Ohio childhood, a Manhattan pulpit, decades of broadcasting, and a presidential honor.
How much religious content should a secular listener expect?
A great deal, and none of it is incidental. Peale served fifty-two years at one church, and the book presents faith as the engine driving everything else, including the positive-thinking material. Someone with no interest in Christian practice can still find the biographical and historical layers rewarding, but will be listening past a lot.
Does Ruth Peale get real space in the account?
The listing credits the two of them jointly with founding the Peale Center for Christian Living and Guideposts magazine, which places her at the center of the institutional work rather than off to one side. Expect a partnership presented as a working one, while the telling itself stays firmly his.
