About Brian Vaszily
Founder, 1World1Book.com
Motivational Speaker & Author of the #1 International Bestseller,
The 9 Intense Experiences: An Action Plan to Change Your Life Forever
When Brian Vaszily was a young child, his father would drop him off at a Chicago library and tell him, in addition to choosing books for himself, to choose five book from the adult section that he believed his father should read.
“It was an awesome responsibility,” Brian says, “because everyone knew my father was brilliant. He spoke seven languages fluently, worked undercover in Intelligence for the U.S. Army in Germany and elsewhere during World War II, and could debate anyone on topics ranging from politics and religion to medicine and gardening – and win.
“I took great care in choosing his books,” Brian continues, “including repeatedly asking librarians who started out amused but ended up irritated if this book on the history of Liechtenstein and that book on rabbit biology was any good. My father actually read the books I chose – maybe not the rabbit biology one, though – and he would then discuss the basic ideas of those books with me. I didn’t understand some of those ideas, being eight or nine years old, but it did instill in me a deep love and respect for the power of books.”
Brian Vaszily describes his life beginning around age nine and for several decades thereafter as “a very wild, sometimes extremely challenging, but always interesting ride, in which books have been one of the few constants that have always helped me grow -- and sometimes flat-out saved me.”
Brian grew up in a Chicago neighborhood where he lost several friends to gangs. His father became a severe alcoholic, spent the last ten years of his life dying from emphysema, depression, and bitterness, and he was very emotionally abusive to Brian, his sister, and his mother during this decade. His father spent the last six months of his life in three different hospitals, and during that time, when Brian was just 20, the girl he had been dating for just four months got pregnant and Brian married her.
“That was all an extremely difficult time,” Brian notes, “but motivated mostly by my mother, books, and a few exceptional teachers, I was determined for my wife and I to be great parents without giving up any of our educational and career goals. So beginning when I was 21, my wife and I attended college full time, and I also worked full time and she worked part time, while we raised our son. We lived on minimum wage pay, massive student loans, food stamps, subsidized housing, for a short period even welfare, but three years later we both graduated.”
Brian earned a degree in English from Northern Illinois University. In the decade-plus thereafter, he elevated himself from a low-level technical writer to a marketing executive in various companies. During this time, though, he was also laid off from one job, fired from another, and he went through bankruptcy. He divorced, married another woman – “still too young to do so” – and years after that was divorced again. During this time, he remained a committed father to his son and to the stepdaughter he helped raise from his second marriage. In those years he also completed writing four different books working late at night and on weekends.
“Three of those books were rejected, in droves, by agents and publishers. In retrospect, there was very good reason for that. Still, out of all the challenges I had already faced in life, the rejection of those books was amongst the most difficult to deal with.”
A small press published his fourth book, a novella called Beyond Stone and Steel, in 2002. The nation’s first published novel about 9/11, Beyond Stone and Steel imagines the last thoughts and feelings of those who died in the planes and towers, such as thoughts of love, gratitude and hope for family and friends. The book received critical praise from the media, including The Chicago Tribune and The Green Bay Press Gazette, and landed Brian multiple television and radio interviews. Brian still receives appreciative letters from readers for the uniquely uplifting book today.
“But writing the book was the least of it,” Brian says. “For over a year, I poured countless hours into contacting the media, book stores, libraries and more toward getting interviews and signings for Beyond Stone and Steel. For every one success there were easily a hundred rejections. That rejection is something you come to appreciate in the big picture, but only in retrospect. You never really get used to it. Long story short, that’s when I really started to learn that, even for that one book out of 50,000 that gets published, and even for those that are exceptional and released by major publishers, almost none of the best books ever really see the light of day.
“Exceptional websites, TV programs, films and all the rest have their great benefits,” Brian says, “but exceptional books still have a by-far unparalleled power to strengthen, enlighten, and motivate individuals – and therefore the society they’re a part of – to be and do their best, to thrive despite whatever circumstances they face. Unfortunately in today’s information-cluttered and rapid-fire-paced world, most of the best books that can truly change lives go unnoticed by those who need them most. My mission with 1 World 1 Book is to change that. Person by person, book by book, and with proceeds going to charities, 1World1Book.com is going to make this world a better place.”
In addition to 1 World 1 Book, Brian Vaszily (pronounced "vay zlee") is the founder and editor of IntenseExperiences.com, of the web’s most popular motivational articles and inspirational videos websites, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers to its free weekly newsletter. He is the author of several books, a public speaker and life coach, and has appeared on multiple radio and TV shows including ABC, NBC, and Fox regional shows.
On a side note, he is featured in his own scence (but only for several seconds!) in Transformers III . Brian is 41 years old, his son is 20 and a student at a Wisconsin college, and Brian lives in Chicago, IL.
