Project hopes to inspire readers

New StoryCorps book wants to help you find your true calling.

A young NBA referee, an oncology nurse, a beekeeper, a waitress and a blues singer.

These are some of the people featured in a book hitting the shelves next week, “Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work” (Penguin Press, $26), a collection of 53 stories from the heart of the American workforce.

In these oral histories — conversations with friends, family members, partners or spouses, co-workers, and customers — a diverse group of people talk about doing what they love.

This new book fills 257 pages with people of all ages discussing what makes work meaningful to them. Culled from thousands of StoryCorps interviews over 12 years, many have neither been published nor broadcast until now.

The stories include a woman

from Little Rock, Arkansas, who helps former inmates obtain the skills and confidence they need to return to the workforce, and a longtime waitress, who takes pride in welcoming newcomers and making them feel at home in her Nashville, Tennessee, diner.

“We live at a time when a lot of the messages for young people, teenagers is to do as little as you can for as much money as you can and retire. The message in this book is there is a much more rewarding path, and a rewarding dream to work hard, to do work that matters, to do something good for the world,” said Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, who will be at the Atlanta History Center on April 25 (see box for more information).

Among the individuals featured in the book are three from Georgia: Carl McNair, remembering his brother, Challenger astronaut Ronald McNair; Kathy Bradley interviewing her father, farmer Johnny Bradley; and Marc Lawson and Karen Lawson, who spoke about their father, video game inventor Jerry Lawson.

A dozen years ago, StoryCorps grew out of a simple idea: ask an important person in your life to go into a soundproof booth.

As Isay puts it, “If I had 40 minutes left to live, what would I ask this person who means so much to me?”

At the end of the session, participants walk away with a CD copy of the interview, and StoryCorps sends another copy to the Library of Congress, where it becomes a part of America’s history (see box to see how you can record your story).

What started with a booth in Grand Central Terminal has grown into one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, with recordings in all 50 states. A permanent StoryCorps recording studio was set up at the Atlanta History Center in 2013.

Close to 3,000 interviews have been recorded at the Atlanta StoryBooth, which is one of three permanent StoryBooths in the country.

Now 65,340 recordings-strong (with almost 125,000 participants across the nation), StoryCorps speaks to the power of the bonds between families, friends and neighbors. Hundreds of the conversations are broadcast on NPR stations around the globe.

With this new book, the first section, titled “Dreamers,” features discussions with people with a wide range of occupations, including an aeromedical field tester, an NBA referee and a scientist.

Other sections include “Healers,” which includes interviews with an oncology nurse and a public defender, and in “Groundbreakers,” Isay presents stories about everything from a pastor to a Ford assembly plant supervisor to a NASCAR driver.

CONTRIBUTED BY STORYCORPS Carl McNair (right), with friend Vernon Skipper, remembers McNair’s brother, astronaut Ronald McNair, for StoryCorps.

CONTRIBUTED BY CARL MCNAIR Carl (left) and Ronald McNair in their freshman year at N.C. A&T. Born 10 months apart, they were virtually inseparable until their careers took them in different directions.