The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey from Evil Toward Good

by Peter Georgescu, David Dorsey (Editor)

We live in a most challenging time. Many of us struggle, emotionally, ethically, and spiritually. We seem headed toward less compassion and consideration, failing to overcome that basic instinct that often leads to evil in human behavior—self-preservation at all costs. Yet within each of us a new future is stirring. We can become better people and build a better world by opting for good over evil—one choice at a time.

In The Constant Choice, Peter Georgescu offers a gripping narrative of his journey from childhood captivity in a Romanian labor camp to his role as CEO of the world-renowned advertising agency Young & Rubicam. His traumatic youth—his parents’ exile from their homeland, his grandfather’s murder in prison, his neighbors’ betrayal of one another—led to a lifelong struggle to grasp humanity’s moral nature. Despite his conviction when he arrived on American soil that he had reached the land of the good, he discovered a more subtle evil at work all around him. Yet he also thrived through the generosity of one benefactor after another. Goodness, he found, isn’t inherent; it evolves from daily choice.

Through decades of reflection on human behavior, as well as philosophical and spiritual exploration, Peter arrived at a new perspective on the significance of our habitual choices. Every decision we make alters our biological nature, for better or worse—a model that has been confirmed by recent science.

The Constant Choice reveals a path for changing who we are and the future of humanity. It’s up to each of us to become activists for good.

329 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 19, 2019

About the author

Peter A. Georgescu is Chairman Emeritus of Young & Rubicam Inc. and author of "The Constant Choice" and "The Source of Success."

Peter Georgescu was born on the eve of the Second World War in Bucharest, Romania. Peter’s father was the Managing Director of Exxon’s operation in Romania. While on a business trip to New York in 1947, the Iron Curtain fell and Peter’s parents could not return to Romania. Overnight they became the enemy of the Communist regime (his father would have been killed if he’d returned to Romania). Peter and his brother were left in Romania with his grandparents and would remain apart from his mother and father for eight years.

His grandfather was seized and imprisoned as a political threat, and then murdered in captivity. Shortly after his grandfather was taken away, Peter, only nine years old, was arrested along with his brother and grandmother and sent to a work camp. With the intervention of Congressman Frances Bolton and President Eisenhower, the boys were reunited with their parents in April of 1954.

"The Constant Choice" is a remarkable story that transcends memoir or autobiography in favor of a reflective look at an unusual life. Peter Georgescu has chosen to write a ground-breaking book about his unlikely path in business and his own illuminating journey in the world of faith. Georgescu has struggled with the forces of both good and evil, which are often indistinguishable, disguised and difficult to differentiate from one another. His story offers a hope and clarity to those struggling in today's confusing and frightening world.

In 2006, Mr. Georgescu published his first book "The Source of Success" -- asserting that personal values and creativity, devoted to creating lasting relationships with individual customers, are the leading drivers of business success in the 21st Century.