On September 18, 2007, Randolph (Randy) Frederick Pausch gave his last lecture titled 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams' in front of an audience of four hundred plus students, faculty and visiting members at the Carnegie Mellon University. The lecture series, previously known as The Last Lecture, now renamed as Journeys, is an academic practice at the university where select faculties deliver a final prelection to students - on wisdoms they wish to impart to students prior to the faculty's supposedly impending death. Ironically, Randy, a computer science professor at the university, did not hypothesize about his death. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had only a few months of living to do. Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008. He left behind a set of principles, captured in the book based on his lecture, which continues to make millions of people pause and reflect on matters that ground and define life.  He did indeed open his heart to life.
Among the audience was Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, who paid heed to Randy's speech. He uploaded a five-minute video synopsis of Randy's lecture on the Journal's web-site. For Randy, it set the ball rolling for network coverage, interviews, a remarkable more than six-million hits on YouTube and more. And finally the book, The Last Lecture, that has been translated in more than 18 languages. Randy did not write the book in a conventional manner of penning down his thoughts. The book is a product of verbal reflections on his life experiences that he shared with Zaslow through his head cell phone while on bike rides, fifty-three in total. In his life, time for him was compressed and of essence. Zaslow became Randy's partner in recording and transforming his words into a book that has few pages but is grand in its impact – reminding us that a credible life is defined by both high and low points.
The theme of the book is living life. It is marked by a stream of deliberations on the author's passion for work and a set of moral codes he practised, as well as gained, while in the process of achieving his goals. His life's account leads to inevitable questions: What makes us unique? Are we defined by the work we do? What do we leave behind for our progeny? If life is a set of interactions, i.e., relationships, which ones are the most significant? What governs those interactions? Randy blends it all together. He takes 'the dreams anchored in childhood' as the starting point of his narration. The validation of life comes through achieving childhood dreams and empowering others to achieve theirs.