"Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant and dedicated, he's a magician able to enchant fourteen-year-olds into a love of reading and writing. His eighth-grade English classroom is no ordinary room, his lessons not your typical syllabus. Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower. A star pupil at St. George's Episcopal school, Clara spends the next three decades redefining the idea of prodigy. She is a high school genius in the 1990s, a Silicon Valley celebrity in the 2000s, and then, perhaps most surprisingly, an animal rights activist-turned-terrorist in the 2010s. But in order to tell Clara's story, Keating must tell his own. Now long retired from the classroom, he reflects on his own days at St. George's, his dashed dreams of writing and comedy, and the lasting relationships built with friends and former students. And, of course, his devastating stroke and the isolation that drove him to look back on his life and legacy. Told with humor and tenderness, Keating's documentation of Clara's life and all in her orbit, including himself, beautifully captures the unique privilege of true human connection. Dazzlingly original, The Optimists is part biography, part love-story, part joke book, and wholly a testament to anyone who has ever taught or been taught"-- Provided by publisher.