We Won: The Autobiography of a Friendship
WE WON is a fortuitous celebration of the half-century friendship of two puckish professors who bonded during graduate school at the University of Chicago and cultivated their allegiance while spending their careers at institutions on opposite coasts. Unlike other books about friendship, this work is jointly authored by friends who blend their voices throughout the story. Yet because a relationship is strengthened when friends share their distinct preferences and perspectives, Joe Price and Don Musser intersperse the account with their individual voices and discrete views. WE WON is also unconventional as an autobiography since it tells the story of their relationship, not a person's memoir, and since it shuns a chronological approach in favor of a narrative organized around their intersecting interests and interactions. Routinely playful and thoughtful, WE WON features stories about Price and Musser's common love for books and dogs, their passion for sports and fandom for favorite teams, their commitment to theological education, their collaborative efforts in teaching and editing, and their engagement in multiple forms of ministry and public service. They also recount how they regularly schemed to meet, especially to rendezvous for professional opportunities throughout the country. These vignettes about their friendship display a vibrant spiritual dimension in ways that detail a very human story about two guys while simultaneously reflecting on their relationship as a vehicle of grace.