Tao Te Ching: A book review by Bob Morris
Tao Te Ching: The Ancient Classic
Lao Tzu, with an Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Capstone Publishing Ltd. (2012)
The definitive examination of what is “the timeless, changeless spirit that runs through all life and matter”
There is no shortage of outstanding translations of Lao Tzu’s ancient classic and an even greater number of commentaries on what he characterizes as “the timeless, changeless spirit that runs through all life and matter…Being that is all inclusive and that existed before Heaven and Earth.”
Those who have read one or more of the volumes that comprise Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classics series already know that he possesses superior reasoning and writing skills as well as a relentless curiosity when conducting research on history’s greatest thinkers and their major works. For these and other reasons, I cannot think of another person better qualified to provide the introductions to the volumes that comprise a new series, Capstone Classics.
Unlike so many others, he provides more, much more than a flimsy “briefing” to the given work. In his 32-page Introduction to this edition of Tao Te Ching, Butler-Bowdon discusses subjects and issues such as these in order to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Lao Tzu’s insights:
o What is – and isn’t – “Tao”
o Recognizing and then being in harmony with its power
o The value and limits of worldly power, fame, and riches
o The need for self-restraint
o Why we should treasure simplicity, purity, compassion, economy (i.e. frugality), and humility
o The importance of “not doing” (i.e. wu wei)
o The limits and perils of “striving”
o Tao Te Ching and Tolstoy’s theory of history
o The unique value of timelessness
o Tao Te Ching and Plato’s concept of “Forms”
o Lao Tzu and Confucius
When concluding his brilliant Introduction, Butler-Bowdon acknowledges attempts by major scholars to understand – and then explain – classic works such as Tao Te Ching:
“Yet as Lao Tzu himself implies in the text (‘The learned men are often not the wise men, nor the wise men, the learned.’), scholars are usually not good at grasping spiritual concepts, and moreover the Chinese language with its five thousand characters is ill-equipped for expressing the abstract idea of Tao. [Dwight] Goddard was therefore not interested in providing the most pedantically correct translation, but rather to capture the essence of a work he loved.”
This Capstone edition uses the classic rendering of the Tao Teh Ching in Dwight Goddard & Henri Borel’s Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei, New York: Brentano’s, 1919. According to Tom Butler-Bowdon, Goddard’s approach is the one to take. That’s good enough for me.
The Wealth of Nations: A book review by Bob Morris
The Wealth of Nations: The Economics Classic
Adam Smith with an Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Captstone Publishing Ltd./A Wiley Company (2010)
How and Why The Wealth of Nations is “one of the most important and influential books ever written.”
The title of this review is from the Foreword to this volume, written by Eamonn Butler (Director of the Adam Smith Institute), and continues as follows: The Wealth of Nations “transformed how we think about the nature of economic life, turning it from an ancient to a recognizably modern form.” Razeen Sally is Senior Lecturer in International Politic al Economy at London School of Economics and Co-Director of European Centre for Political Economy (ECIPE). In the Preface, he observes, “The governing principles of the Smithian economic system is ‘natural liberty’ (or non-intervention), which allows ‘every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.’ And as Smith goes on to say, ‘All systems of preference or restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord.’”
Those who have read one or more of the volumes that comprise Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classics series already know that he possesses superior reasoning and writing skills as well as a relentless curiosity when conducting research on history’s greatest thinkers and their major works. For these and other reasons, I cannot think of another person better qualified to provide the introductions to the volumes that comprise a new series, Capstone Classics.
Unlike so many others, he provides more, much more than a flimsy “briefing” to the given work. In his 32-page Introduction to this edition of The Wealth of Nations, Butler-Bowdon discusses subjects and issues such as these in order to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Smith’s insights:
o Adam Smith and the world in which he lived
o The Wealth of Nations (TWON): Its origins and influences
o The major political and economic issues that it addresses
o The meaning and significance of two terms, “wealth” and “nations,” in the book’s title
o Contemporary works with which it was compared and contrasted
o Adam Smith’s views on social relations
o How a strong market “works”
o Why specialization is “the key to prosperity”
o Smith’s views on enlightened self-interest as opposed to society’s best interests
o The crucial role of capital
o How and why Smith differentiates (in TWON) a nation’s productivity and its system of currency
o The respective roles of price and demand in a market economy
o TWON)‘s “agrarian bias”
o Smith’s views on government’s proper role
o Correlations between personal wealth and natural wealth
o Smith’s views on hum rights
There are dozens of others, of course, but hopefully these will provide at least some indication of the scope of Butler-Bowdon’s coverage in the 32-page Introduction. As indicated earlier, is to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Adam Smith’s insights. He does so brilliantly and also in each of the other volumes in the Capstone Classics series that have been published thus far.
The Wealth of Nations: A book review by Bob Morris
The Wealth of Nations: The Economics Classic
Adam Smith with an Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Capstone Publishing Ltd./A Wiley Company (2010)
How and Why The Wealth of Nations is “one of the most important and influential books ever written.”
The title of this review is from the Foreword to this volume, written by Eamonn Butler (Director of the Adam Smith Institute), and continues as follows: The Wealth of Nations “transformed how we think about the nature of economic life, turning it from an ancient to a recognizably modern form.” Razeen Sally is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics and Co-Director of European Centre for Political Economy (ECIPE). In the Preface, he observes, “The governing principles of the Smithian economic system is ‘natural liberty’ (or non-intervention), which allows ‘every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.’ And as Smith goes on to say, ‘All systems of preference or restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord.’”
Those who have read one or more of the volumes that comprise Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classics series already know that he possesses superior reasoning and writing skills as well as a relentless curiosity when conducting research on history’s greatest thinkers and their major works. For these and other reasons, I cannot think of another person better qualified to provide the introductions to the volumes that comprise a new series, Capstone Classics.
Unlike so many others, he provides more, much more than a flimsy “briefing” to the given work. In his 32-page Introduction to this edition of The Wealth of Nations, Butler-Bowdon discusses subjects and issues such as these in order to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Smith’s insights:
o Adam Smith and the world in which he lived
o The Wealth of Nations (TWON): Its origins and influences
o The major political and economic issues that it addresses
o The meaning and significance of two terms, “wealth” and “nations,” in the book’s title
o Contemporary works with which it was compared and contrasted
o Adam Smith’s views on social relations
o How a strong market “works”
o Why specialization is “the key to prosperity”
o Smith’s views on enlightened self-interest as opposed to society’s best interests
o The crucial role of capital
o How and why Smith differentiates (in TWON) a nation’s productivity and its system of currency
o The respective roles of price and demand in a market economy
o TWON‘s “agrarian bias”
o Smith’s views on government’s proper role
o Correlations between personal wealth and natural wealth
o Smith’s views on human rights
There are dozens of others, of course, but hopefully these will provide at least some indication of the scope of Butler-Bowdon’s coverage in the 32-page Introduction. As indicated earlier, is to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Adam Smith’s insights. He does so brilliantly and also in each of the other volumes in the Capstone Classics series that have been published thus far.
The Prince: A book review by Bob Morris
The Prince: The Original Classic
Niccolò Machiavelli, with an Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Capstone Publishing Ltd. (2010)
How and why a leader needs to be both “a fox to discern snares, and a lion to drive off wolves”
Those who have read one or more of the volumes that comprise Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classics series already know that he possesses superior reasoning and writing skills as well as a relentless curiosity when conducting research on history’s greatest thinkers and their major works. For these and other reasons, I cannot think of another person better qualified to provide the introductions to the volumes that comprise a new series, Capstone Classics.
Unlike so many others, he provides more, much more than a flimsy “briefing” to the given work. As Butler-Bowdon points out, “recent research has focused on [Machiavelli’s] ethics and the fact that he was a genuine moral philosopher and well-rounded Renaissance man whose overriding wish was to be useful.” This obviously challenges the mistaken but durable perception of Machiavelli as being “evil” by those who have never read The Prince and know even less about the age in which it was written.
Indeed, as Yale’s Erica Benner suggests in Machiavelli’s Ethics (published by Princeton University Press, 2009), The Prince is “best seen not as a guide on how to be ruthless or self-serving, but rather as a lens to see objectively the prevailing views of the day, and to open the eyes of the reader to the motives of others.”
For this volume, Butler-Bowdon poses and then addresses key issues such as these in order to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Niccolò Machiavelli’s insights:
o The defining characteristics of the social and political forces of the period during which he lived and worked
o The extent to which The Prince accurately reflects that period
o The dominant influences (for better or worse) on Machiavelli’s career
o Their impact on his efforts to advance that career amidst deadly perils and equally perilous opportunities
o The unique contributions and heritage of The Prince within the development of western literature
o Machiavelli’s articles of religious faith and perspectives political realities (e.g. his “success laws”)
o His definition of “power” and how best to gain and then apply it
o Girolamo Savonarola’s significance
o The role of image and charisma in effective leadership
o Machiavelli’s “final, powerful message” to our own times
There were so many passages in The Prince that caught my eye while re-reading it prior to writing this brief review. One was cited in its title (i.e. a leader needs to be both “a fox to discern snares, and a lion to drive off wolves”) and Butler-Bowdon cites another when concluding the Introduction to this volume: Reflecting Machiavelli’s basic philosophy regarding the division of causal power between and chance and merit, he states that, “What remains to be done must be done by you,” as ultimately “God will not do everything Himself.” To which Butler-Bowdon responds, “The Prince ultimately is a book of action, and demands of you the reader, to act without fear to achieve noble things, acquiring distinction and perhaps a certain glory in your own lifetime.”
As indicated earlier, Tom Butler-Bowdon’s purpose in this introduction is to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Machiavelli’s insights. He does so brilliantly and also in each of the other volumes in the Capstone Classics series that have been published thus far.
Think and Grow Rich: A book review by Bob Morris
Think and Grow Rich: The Original Classic
Napoleon Hill, with an Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Capstone Publishing Ltd. (2009)
The “Supreme Secret” of success: “Anything the human mind can believe, the human mind can achieve.”
Those who have read one or more of the volumes that comprise Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classics series already know that he possesses superior reasoning and writing skills as well as a relentless curiosity when conducting research on history’s greatest thinkers and their major works. For these and other reasons, I cannot think of another person better qualified to provide the introductions to the volumes that comprise a new series, Capstone Classics.
Think and Grow Rich was based on two decades of research conducted by Napoleon Hill (concluded in 1928) after being retained by Andrew Carnegie to complete an analysis of 500 of the most successful people in the United States and elsewhere. The title of his original report, Laws of Success, consisted of 1,500 pages in a series of seven volumes, in which Hill lists and discusses 17 “principles of achievement.” It is worth noting that this volume in the Capstone Classics series also contains both the “Publisher’s Preface to Original Edition” and the “Author’s Introduction to Original Edition” (published in 1937) and a list of those interviewed by Napoleon Hill over a 20-year period.
Unlike so many others, Butler-Bowdon provides more, much more than a flimsy “briefing” to the given work. For this volume, he creates a context, a frame-of-reference, for Napoleon Hill’s insights in a 16-page introduction in which he addresses subjects, themes, and issues such as these:
o A brief but remarkably insightful review of pertinent details in Hill’s circumstances when retained by Carnegie
o His magazine ventures, notably Hill’s Golden Rule and Napoleon Hill’s Magazine
o Hill’s DRAFT of a book, The 13 Steps to Riches, based on material introduced in Laws of Success
o Original title of DRAFT was changed to Use Your Noodle to Win More Boodle and then, finally and thankfully, to Think and Grow Rich
o Hill’s “four clear elements of success” (i.e. desire, faith, plans, and persistence)
o The moral and spiritual foundation of Think and Grow Rich
o 31 reasons why people fail
o The self-defeating aspects of personality that many (most?) people do not recognize
So what is “The “Supreme Secret” of success revealed by Hill in a later work, Grow Rich with Peace of Mind, published in 1967, three years before his death? “Anything the human mind can believe, the human mind can achieve.” Although it may now be fashionable to dismiss (often with ridicule) all such aphorisms, the fact remains that every success in life does indeed require an idea, an insight, that someone then makes a reality.
Thomas Edison was right: “Vision without execution is hallucination” but execution without purpose is merely effort without value. As Butler-Bowdon suggests, “Hill was saying that there were no limits to what a person can do [unless self-imposed], and history has proved it so thousands of times with the stories of any remarkable person.”
As indicated earlier, Tom Butler-Bowdon’s purpose in this introduction is to create a context, a frame-of-reference, for Hill’s insights. He does so brilliantly in this instance and in each of the other volumes in the Capstone Classics series that have been published thus far.
Before They Were Famous
Here is a blog post by my friend Tom Butler-Bowdon, author of the five volumes that comprise the 50 Classics series, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
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I’m delighted to be blogging for the new UK version of Huffington Post. Have a look at my latest post Before They Were Famous, which reveals the success ingredient I believe is most overlooked.
Tom Butler-Bowdon
Please comment, share and subscribe to future posts!
What Did Tom Learn After Reading 250 of the Greatest Books Ever Written?
This was the title of James Rick’s interview with me on the FullPotential show recently. I really enjoyed this one!
Click here to watch.
Please join me on Facebook (if you’re not a FB friend, invite me)…and on Twitter
Warm wishes, Tom
Email me
My website
* * *
Stephen Fry, the English author and wit, was once having coffee with some young, emerging comedians in Chicago. He said to them:
“From the vantage point of my ‘elderly’ position of a 50 year old… if I could offer any advice it is that it is that it is never too late, that the idea that the door closes and ‘Oh gosh, I’m already 30, nothing’s happened’ – it’s complete nonsense. Actually almost the reverse is true. A lot of the stars…George Clooney… who is that guy from House? He had to wait until his late 40s…”
Fry was being ironic, as “that guy from House” was his university friend Hugh Laurie whom he had done television comedy shows with in their younger years. Laurie became one of America’s highest paid television stars in his role as the genius, quirky doctor in House, but this success was hardly preordained. When invited to audition for the show’s pilot in 2004, Laurie was in Namibia working on a film. But he made a video of himself doing the part in his hotel bathroom, because it had the best light. The show’s director, Bryan Singer, had wanted a quintessential American for the lead role, and instantly felt Laurie was what he was looking for (Laurie’s accent was so good Singer didn’t know he was British). At 43, he had the part. Fry also mentions George Clooney, who didn’t get his famous ER role until his mid-30s, and until that point had had only minor roles.
Hugh Grant fell into acting by accident, but enjoyed it enough to keep plugging away with small television and film roles. As he entered his 30s, however, what enthusiasm he still had began to desert him. After watching a clip from an early stage performance, the BBC’s Adrian Chiles pressed him as to whether he always believed, in the early part of his career, that he would ‘make it’. He replied:
“I didn’t think anything great was going to happen…I did very bad television for a number of years.”
Chiles: “But then it just took off.”
“Just when I was about to give up, it took off, yeah. I remember going to the audition for Four Weddings and saying ‘This is the last one I go to. I’m 32, I’m bored of this, it’s humiliating. And then I got the job.”
Note that Grant’s response is hardly a rousing “Of course I believed!” The prospect facing the later-than-normal succeeder almost always includes some perceived humiliation, but Fortune often requires us to try one more time before she opens to us her heart, connections and coffers. Grant did, and as anyone knows, Four Weddings and a Funeral was a huge hit that made him a star.
When someone becomes famous, we feel as if we have known them all along, and that their rise was inevitable. Yet in his book Focus, the marketing guru Al Ries provides a rather counterintuitive tip for becoming a remarkable person:
“What you need to do is to study what leaders did before they became leaders, not what they did after they became leaders.”
Television programs and popular magazines like to point out amusing or embarrassing things the stars did before they ‘made it’. But these before-they-were-famous vignettes never highlight the serious amounts of work or refinement of skills that would lead to their ‘lucky’ break. What were they doing in the early years that prepared them for later success, and that is worth emulating by someone in a similar position now?
Perhaps the most important quality in becoming a leader, achiever or star is not the skills themselves, or even who you know, but a willingness to bide one’s time. As the French philosopher Montesquieu, who did not produce his masterwork, The Spirit of the Laws, until his late 50s, said:
“Success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.”
Perhaps it’s obvious, but it’s also so easy to forget: never get too discouraged by the apparent gap between what you believe you are capable of, and what it seems you are right now. It’s one thing to be told we should never to be afraid of entertaining thoughts of doing or being something great, and indeed part of the work of achievement is arriving at strong self-belief. But most of this advice leaves off the crucial bit: give yourself the time to do the thing, or become the person. To us normal people the world can seem full of people with unattainable genius, but as Henry Ford (who did not start his company until he was 40, after many attempts and failures) once said, “Genius is experience.”
Interview Update
Here are my most recent interviews, with links.
John Baldoni
John Baldoni (author of Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up)
Click here.
William Seidman (co-author with Michael McCauley of Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance
Click here.
William ("Bill") SeidmanOrganizations)Click here.
Jay Greene
Jay Greene (author of Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons)
Click here.
Ira Chaleff
Ira Chaleff (author of The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders)
Click here.
Maddy Dychtwald
Maddy Dychtwald (Author of Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better
Click here.
Tom Butler-Bowden (Author of the 50 Classics series)
Click here
Chip Conley
Chip Conley (Second interview of the author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow)
Click here.
Jill Konrath
Jill Konrath (Second interview of the author of Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling)
Click here.
Richard Brandt
Richard L. Brandt (Author of Inside Larry & Sergey’s Brain and forthcoming One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Triumph of Amazon.com)
Click here.
Robyn Waters
Robyn Waters (Second interview of author of The Trendmaster’s Guide and The Mini and the Hummer)
Click here.
Jeff Prouty (Founder and chairman of Minneapolis-based The Prouty Project)
Jeff Prouty
Click here.
Scott Belsky
Scott Belsky (Author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision & Reality)
Click here.
Richard Florida
Richard Florida (Author of The Rise of the Creative Class, The Breakthrough Illusion, The Flight of the Creative Class, and The Great Reset)
Click here.
Dean R. Spitzer (Author of Transforming Performance Measurement)
Click here.
Dean R. Spitzer
Walter Kiechel
Walter Kiechel (Author of The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World)
Click here.
Interview: Tom Butler-Bowdon
Tom Butler-Bowdon
Morris: Of all the non-religious works that were composed before (let’s say) the 20th century, which one of them were you most surprised to find is relevant today?
Butler-Bowdon: My personal favourite of the 19th century is Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, published on the same day as Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in 1859. Smiles was a Scottish doctor cum journalist who had begun giving inspiring talks to working men in the north of England, drawing on many of the Victorian success stories of his time. The book is a wealth of examples of people who beat the odds and did something great with their lives, and although it is dated to the extent that he included almost no women, it is still a brilliant motivational work that deserves a bigger readership today. During his lifetime Smiles was quite famous, and it was said that many homes only had two books: the Bible and Self-Help. It was also the inspiration for Orison Swett Marden, the founder of Success magazine in the US and the author of books like Pushing to The Front.
Morris: To me, “spiritual” has always been an elusive term to define. What did you decide when selecting and then discussing the works in the 50 Spiritual Classics volume?
Butler-Bowdon: First, it was never going to be 50 Religious Classics. I was less interested in famous theologians or works of orthodoxy than whether a book had deeply moved or inspired people, whether it was written five or five hundred years ago. And I wasn’t bothered if some writings would be seen by others as sacrilegious (I wrote about a book on Wicca, for instance) or even a bit ‘trashy’. I was very keen to highlight that this has been a golden era in terms of modern spiritual writing, with books like The Celestine Prophecy, The Power of Now, Conversations With God and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior representing a new canon that lay totally outside established religion. Again, as with the previous 50 Classics books, I wanted to show that, even though many of them had been huge bestsellers, and people’s lives were being changed by these writings, they had not been given due critical recognition.
Having said this, I was also keen to cover many of the famous spiritual writings by authors such as Augustine, Teresa of Avila and Al Ghazzali. I wanted 50 Spiritual to be a treasury of inspiration covering many centuries.
Finally, my aim was to make this a spiritual book for people who don’t necessarily believe in God. The point I make is that, whether or not you believe in a divine entity, there is an unseen order that moves the universe, and that getting in tune with it provides for a magical, purposeful life. You become a vehicle for this force, helping to advance the universe in a positive way.
If you wish to read the complete interview, please contact me at interllect@mindspring.com.
Also, you are invited to check out this Web site:
Q #210: Which are the most highly regarded books on the subject of success?
There is someone else far better qualified than I am to respond to that question. Tom Butler-Bowen is the author of five volumes in the 50 Classics series. He selected and then discusses primary sources for five subjects: prosperity, psychology, success, self-help, and spirituality. In each of the five volumes, he provides a brief bio of each author, then examines several key ideas and explains the enduring significance of the given work. Here is a representative selection of authors and works featured in 50 Success Classics:
Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick (1867)
Chin-ning Chu, Thick Face Black Heart (1992)
Russell H. Conwell, Acres of Diamonds (1921)
W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis (1974)
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937)
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom (1994)
Orison Swett Marden, Pushing To The Front (1894)
Zig Ziglar, See You At The Top (1975)
Here is an excerpt from Butler-Bowen’s discussion of Horatio Alger:
“The New York City of the mid-19th century was an awful place for many of its inhabitants. Areas such as Five Points (setting for the movie Gangs of New York) were dangerous and filthy, filled with abandoned or neglected children. Many slept outside at night, and most wore assemblages of badly-fitting ‘ragged’ clothes. During the day they hawked matches, sold newspapers, shined shoes or picked pockets in order to eat. The authorities did little to alleviate the situation, and in a celebrated case, a street urchin found naked was represented by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Horatio Alger, the chronicler of this world to a public who may have preferred not to know that it existed, was not himself a New Yorker, having been brought up in middle-class comfort with a private school education followed by Harvard. Though he had had some writing published, Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York With The Boot-Blacks was Horatio Alger’s first bestseller, setting the template for scores of poor-boy-makes-good novels that had a massive influence on young Americans. Groucho Marx and Ernest Hemingway were among those said to have devoured his work.”
To those curious to know which are the most highly regarded books on the subject of success, I highly recommend Butler-Bowen’s own book as a guide to those sources. Here is a link to Butler-Bowdon’s Web site where you can obtain more information about him and his works. You can also sign up for e-mail alerts:
http://www.butler-bowdon.com/
Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob
Q #209:Which are the most highly regarded books on the subject of spirituality?
There is someone else far better qualified than I am to respond to that question. Tom Butler-Bowdon is the author of five volumes in the 50 Classics series. He selected and then discusses primary sources for five subjects: prosperity, psychology, success, self-help, and spirituality. In each of the five volumes, he provides a brief bio of each author, then examines several key ideas and explains the enduring significance of the given work. Here is a representative selection of authors and works featured in 50 Spiritual Classics:
Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks (1932)
Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan (1972)
Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1927)
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Mother Teresa, A Simple Path (1994)
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi (1974)
Here is an excerpt from Butler-Bowdon’s discussion of Ghandi:
“What first strikes you about Gandhi’s autobiography is the strange wording of the title. If it had been a mere political life story, the title would have read something like ‘An Autobiography: How I Liberated India from British Rule’. But right from the beginning of the book, Gandhi is at pains to point out that it is not simply a description of events (although it does provide this), but the recording of his efforts to isolate ‘truth’ amid the chaos of normal existence. What makes the book doubly interesting is that it was written before he became a famous world figure. He did not, after all, return to live in India until 1915, when he in his mid-40s, and he was not then the white-robed figure we think of today but a lawyer in a suit with a family.
“The salutary term ‘Mahatama’ (great soul) had yet to stick, and he was still able to travel around India without getting mobbed. Whereas biographical dictionaries devote most of their entries to Gandhi’s political work in India, three quarters of the Autobiography is devoted to his youth and the 21 years of his adult life that he spent working for the rights of Indians in South Africa. Wherever he was, though, the constants in Gandhi’s life were his various experiments, the main ones being vegetarianism, celibacy, non-violence and simple living. Each of these were expressions of larger philosophical/spiritual concepts that he drew from Hinduism: brahmacharya; ahimsa; and aparigraha. No understanding of Gandhi is possible without at least having some awareness of these terms and what they meant to him. Written originally in his native Gurjarati, the book did not appear in English until 1957. Though rather long, it is broken up into short, clearly titled chapters on the essential episodes in his life, and is one of the more gripping life stories you are likely to read.”
To those curious to know which are the most highly regarded books on the subject of spirituality, I highly recommend this book as a guide to other sources. Here is a link to Butler-Bowdon’s Web site where you can obtain more information about him and his works. You can also sign up for e-mail alerts:
http://www.butler-bowdon.com/Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob
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