If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young

If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (Seven Stories Press) is a 2013 collection of nine commencement speeches from Kurt Vonnegut, selected and introduced by Dan Wakefield.

After the publication of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five brought him worldwide acclaim in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut became one of America's most popular graduation speakers. There were years when public speaking was Vonnegut's main source of income. "We are performing animals," he used to say somewhat sardonically. In these speeches Vonnegut jokes, entertains, inspires, and conveys something of the momentousness of life.

In 2016, Seven Stories Press released what it called a "(much) expanded second edition" of the book.

The Speeches

1. How to Make Money and Find Love! Fredonia College, Fredonia, New York, May 20, 1978
2. Advice to Graduating Women (That All Men Should Know) Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, May 15, 1999
3. How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't Rice University, Houston, Texas, October 12, 2001
4. Why You Can't Stop Me From Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson The Indiana Civil Liberties Union (now The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, September 16, 2000
5. How Music Cures Our Ills (And There Are Lots of Them) Eastern Washington University, Spokane, Washington, April 17, 2004
6. Don't Despair If You Never Went to College! Carl Sandburg Award, Chicago, Illinois, October 12, 2001
7. What the "Ghost Dance" of the Native Americans and the French Painters Who Led the Cubist Movement Have In Common The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, February 17, 1994
8. How I Learned From a Teacher What Artists Do Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, May 8, 1994
9. Don't Forget Where You Come From Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 11, 1996