Combining scholarship with personal experience, Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life uses examples ranging from Barack Obama's talent for storytelling to the experiences of students from London's East End to examine how story and imagination inform our ideas about education, politics, aging, and doing research.

Acknowledgements ; Chapter One: Introduction: Trafficking In Human Possibilities ; Chapter Two: Knowledge, Belief, And Disbelief ; Chapter Three: Ageing ; Chapter Four: Education ; Chapter Five: Politics ; Conclusion ; Bibliography

"This book is a gem -- an imaginative, scholarly voyage into the rich territory where the possible and the actual must live together in the stories we tell to ourselves and to each other." -- Jerome Bruner, University Professor, New York University "Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life is a delightful and perceptive book. Molly Andrews is a master of what she refers to as 'The integration of personal experience with rigorous scholarship.' Her book is full of insights." -- Mary Warnock "This is an engaging and insightful book by the internationally renowned scholar of political narratives, Molly Andrews's. In this book, unlike in her previous works, she is not focusing on a particular research project but integrates her previous works into reflections on different aspects of the role of imagination in everyday life. Unlike some other scholars who see 'heroic lives' and 'everyday lives' as mutually exclusive, the power of Molly Andrews work is her ability to show how the two are interwoven in the lives and imaginations of political activists - and the rest of us - in different parts of the world." -- Nira Yuval-Davis, Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging , University of East London "[Narrative Imagination] provides useful methodological insights into the work of oral historians--the inherent tensions in suspending disbelief when interviewing subjects and the difficulty of truly apprehending the world of others... The sauce of this book is thickened by Andrews's vivid autoethnographic style-she describes brief moments of clarity while sharing space with two million people at Obama's second inauguration or talking with her daughter's friends about growing up. Such encounters show that there are stories everywhere, and so our work as oral history scholars and teachers is to stir conversations that embrace the transformative role of our imaginative, and sometimes imagined, lives." --Oral History

Selling point: First book to study in detail the role that imagination plays in narrative psychology Selling point: Gives a panoramic perspective on story and imagination with regards to topics such as aging, politics and education Selling point: Combines personal reflection with scholarly research Selling point: Provides detailed examples of role of stories and its relationship to the imagination, both in terms of potential and limitations

Molly Andrews is Professor of Political Psychology and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London. Her research interests include the psychological basis of political commitment, psychological challenges posed by societies in transition to democracy, patriotism, conversations between generations, and gender and aging.

Selling point: First book to study in detail the role that imagination plays in narrative psychology Selling point: Gives a panoramic perspective on story and imagination with regards to topics such as aging, politics and education Selling point: Combines personal reflection with scholarly research Selling point: Provides detailed examples of role of stories and its relationship to the imagination, both in terms of potential and limitations