By Ben Miles

Eckhart Tolle first gained acclaim as bestselling author of The Power of Now, and his current notoriety remains widespread, thanks to Oprah Winfrey. Oprah’s imprimatur on Tolle’s 2005 A New Earth—his treatise regarding life purpose—has made this guru of the here-and-now the shaman of the moment. Winfrey selected that transformational tome as her book club assignment in January 2008, accompanying it with a no-expense 10-week online seminar co-facilitated by Tolle and the talk-show queen herself.

As the meaning of Tolle’s simple words and sentence structures unfold into archetypal philosophical notions, both The Power of Now and A New Earth provide peak reading experiences that are easily comprehended and profoundly affecting. However, Tolle’s most concise work, and arguably the one with the most impact, is the 2003 reader Stillness Speaks. Constructed in ten chapters, the 129-page hardcover booklet serves up enlightenment in small, easily digested grammatical dollops.

The chapters have incisive-sounding titles such as “Beyond the Thinking Mind,” “Who You Truly Are,” and “Suffering and the End of Suffering.” These divisional captions exemplify Tolle’s talent for framing words and provoking thought. Each of the well-ordered and mystically intriguing sectionals compose roughly one-tenth of the text. But Stillness is not only literature for the linear-minded among us. Think of it as an existential and spiritual buffet of language and insight, if you will. Dig in and indulge from any spot you please. For instance, while randomly leafing through the book’s pages, we happen upon this: “The mind is…looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for its identity. This is how the ego comes into existence.” Ohm on that for a moment or two. Or, how about this, from a thumb-thrown landing on page 107: “By learning to die daily you open yourself to life.” Who said irony is dead?

In the introduction to Stillness Speaks, its author admonishes, “This is not a book to be read from cover to cover.” Instead, he advises, “Live with it, pick it up…[and] put it down frequently.” As one who has made somewhat of a practice of these suggestions, this writer attests to the enduring truths made available through Tolle’s lucid wordings. Crafted in an exquisitely straightforward yet soulful manner, Stillness Speaks speaks in an accessible and resonant voice.

Visit newworld.com for more information.

By Ben Miles

You are a genius! That’s the premise of Susanna Lange and Otto Siegel’s recent book that is titled, appropriately enough, Yes, You Are a Genius, Whether You Know It or Not. If you’ve any doubt about this declaration, or even if you don’t, it’s worth the time it takes to explore the authors’ contention.

In a taut and easy-to-read 122 pages (including a support-oriented afterward and a helpful four-page list of suggested readings), Lange and Siegel have partitioned their treatise into eleven brief but comprehensive chapters. With chapter headings such as “You Are a Natural Genius,” “Re-connect to Your Natural Genius,” and “Stop De-Genius-izing Yourself,” Yes, You Are a Genius takes a step-by-step approach to demythologizing the phenomenon we’ve come to recognize as genius.

Lange and Siegel assert that “genius isn’t just found in the Mozarts and Einsteins of the world.” They offer as their initial evidence Einstein’s oft-stated belief: “There is genius in everyone.” The claim seems, at first glance, to defy intuition. After all, we are accustomed to understanding genius as a rare state of mind. But Lange and Siegel make a strong case for their argument. They pose three questions to the reader: What is my unique set of genius abilities? Which environment brings them out? How and where can I intentionally leverage them? If you don’t know the answers to this trio of brain-tickling queries, the Genius writers suggest that “your genius is still dormant.”

In deconstructing and reframing terminology such as desire, passion, and love, Genius becomes an uplifting lesson in the how-tos of learning and living, offering a clarifying and systematic approach to self-enhancement. Lange and Siegel are also generous in the litany of proffered resources. For instance, at the Genius Web site, geniuscoaching.net, readers may download audio files on body meditation, the creative visualization process, and a “free genius training” program.

To paraphrase a wise old axiom, genius is a terrible thing to waste. Studying Yes, You Are a Genius may serve to minimize such waste. At the very least, Genius is certain to stimulate the reader’s thinking while providing rich insight and valuable guidance.

By Ben Miles

Reading former vice president Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, is very much like scanning a textbook written by an affable and impressively informed university professor. The initial impression is a workbook with emphasis more on the work to be done than on the book to be read. But as one negotiates the 273 pages that comprise nine chapters, an introduction and conclusion, an index, and twenty-nine pages of chapter-by-chapter notes, the read becomes an absorbing one. It’s not that Reason doesn’t require discipline from its audience; the sheer vastness of topics seems, in fact, at times to defy comprehensibility.

We begin at Johannes Gutenberg’s press, which, according to Gore, facilitated the fifteenth-century Renaissance period while laying the foundation for The Enlightenment. A quantum leap takes us into Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of “hot” and “cool” media and through the psychological notions behind attachment theory. There are side trips to the Geneva Conventions, Barry Glassner’s Culture of Fear concept, and the mechanics of mass persuasion. In whittling the complex treatise to a pointed and singular focus, Gore throughout his book allows the reader to see the light at the end of this polemic tunnel.

Beside his terms as vice president, Gore is known as an author of books on ecology: Earth in the Balance (1992) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006). In Reason, Gore is concerned with our political environment. As he’s done in the past with the rain forest and the ozone layer, Gore lists and laments the dangers threatening to destroy our democracy. Among these carcinogens that attack freedom are the systematic utilization of fear and misuse of religious faith; the distracting culture of entertainment; and the concentration of power that exists within the national media and executive branch of the federal government.

In the concluding portion of Reason, Gore refers to Fredrick Douglass and reiterates what the great abolitionist “suddenly understood: the essential connection between literacy and liberty, ignorance and ‘fitness’ to be a slave.”

Some pundits have made favorable comparisons to Gore’s Reason and Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet. Gore’s accomplishment is not only replete with common sense; it is also an admirable scholarly accomplishment.

By Ben Miles

Automobile-industry icon Lee Iacocca’s latest contribution to the annals of bestselling American nonfiction is 263 pages of the brilliant businessman’s head-of-the-herd thinking, along with his wisdom and inimitable abilities as a raconteur.

Iacocca, now in his eighties, is author of two previous chart-toppers. In his new book, the erstwhile CEO of both the Ford and Chrysler companies disassembles the construct of leadership and offers for examination its component parts—what he refers to as the Nine Cs of Leadership: Curiosity, Creativity, Communication, Character, Courage, Charisma, Conviction, Competence, and Common Sense. This simple template provides the framework for Iacocca’s written revelation of personal scenarios and memorable face-to-face encounters with other greatness. Iacocca seemed to know nearly everybody who is, or was, anybody. He maintained a friendship with Frank Sinatra until his death in 1998, and writes of how Ole Blue Eyes, after “celebrating” too much, sang at the auto honcho’s 1992 retirement party. It was the great Voice’s final public performance.

Iacocca’s relationship with Ronald Reagan was intimate enough for the mogul of the minivan to assert that Reagan was “the sunniest guy I ever met…[with not] a mean bone in his body.” Iacocca felt that Reagan’s agreeableness was the reason for his charisma. And who would’ve predicted that Iacocca would team with rapper Snoop Dogg for a nationally televised Chrysler commercial, the proceeds from which went to the Iacocca Foundation? The foundation is dedicated to curing type one diabetes, the disease that took the life of Iacocca’s first wife, Mary.

Iacocca’s critique and condemnation of George W. Bush’s leadership is piercing and unabashed, and is reportedly one of the reasons Iacocca (along with Catherine Whitney) wrote this book. Iacocca’s longwinded sobriquet for the president is “Mr.—they’ll-welcome-us-with-open-arms-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-misson-accomplished—Bush.” If that doesn’t quite say it all, it certainly is a taut and to-the-point summary of Iacocca’s subzero opinion of our forty-third president.

Lee Iacocca is wealthy, still healthy, witty, and sly. Coming from that place, the author has no use for subterfuge or dishonesty. After reading Where Have All The Leaders Gone? one is likely to be convinced that Iacocca personifies and embodies the Nine Cs of Leadership, but he seems to exude one quality above all: Character.

Leadership 101: Inspirational Quotes and Insights for Leaders , John Maxwell. Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2002. 109 pages

By Ben Miles

John C. Maxwell is smart as well as practical. But don’t just take this reviewer’s word for it—certainly not when you can quickly and easily gather this in Maxwell’s own words. Dr. Maxwell, founder of the Injoy leadership group, is author of the REAL Leadership Series: four hardcover booklets, each around 100 pages long. This rather portable collection’s title is, of course, an acronym: Realistic, Equipping, Attitude, Leadership.

Maxwell’s credentials and reputation are built upon his expertise in leadership. We begin with the theme book of the series, Leadership 101 , which is also the first published of the four topics. The good news is that Maxwell’s rundown on leadership is concise, simple, accessible, and immediately applicable. For example, Maxwell informs us early on that at a minimum, each of us influences ten other people in a lifetime. The author suggests that “it’s not whether you influence someone, but how you will use your influence.” Inspirational? Yes, indeed. Axiomatic? Perhaps. Maxwell regularly utters such proclamations, but offers no bibliography and few scholarly references. Nevertheless, we can be grateful for the short-list of endnotes that he has made available. After all, how many hundred-page readers offer direction to further resources?

Maxwell’s approach may often seem trite, clichéd and, at times, like corporate propaganda, but there is often truth within his examples. The hoary and dubious account of Ray Kroc’s buyout of the McDonald brothers’ Central California hamburger stand that made him the golden child—or perhaps the Golden Arches child—of fast food comes to mind. The author’s grasp of leadership technique and models of human potential are more than one might bargain for in what amounts to an old-fashioned essay.

Full of stories and examples that embody his notions of leadership—the anecdote on Teddy Roosevelt raising himself from sickly little boy to uberoutdoorsman and then on to the American presidency is memorably mythological and super-patriotic in tone—Maxwell’s theological (he’s also a Christian minister) and USA-centric biases radiate throughout the tiny tome like light through a porous napkin. Yet, there’s no question as to Maxwell’s purpose and message: we all influence others; leadership is nothing more than the ability to influence; leadership skills can be learned, improved, and continually increased. Each chapter begins with an opening statement. Chapter 7 (out of ten) begins as follows: “The true measure of leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.”

For readers interested in a brief read and a sturdy lesson on leadership, Maxwell gives a taut tutorial on the perplexing subject that requires a minimum investment of time. That’s a smart and practical approach to the topic.

The Art of Teaching , Jay Parini, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 2004, 176 pages, $17.95

By: Ben Miles

Jay Parini has blessed pedagogues of all stripes with his most recent book The Art of Teaching . Parini, himself a professor of English at Middlebury College, in Vermont, offers a taut and elegant glimpse into the teacher’s craft.

In five chapters, distributed over a mere 160 pages, Parini’s economic and often poetic use of language provides a plethora of compact lessons for those who are teachers, or for those who aspire to that noble vocation.

In a particularly memorable passage, Parini states that successful teachers he’s known are very much aware that they have to don what he calls a mask when they present themselves as teachers. He maintains that “one must get over the foolish notion that a mask is not ‘authentic,’ that there is something shameful about ‘not being yourself….’ Authenticity is, ultimately, a construction, something invented—much as a suit of clothes will feel authentic, or inauthentic, given the context.”

Quoting poet Pablo Neruda—“myselfs are many”—and evoking Virginia Woolf, who believed that “a biographer is lucky to pin down a half-dozen selves in a good biography,” Parini asserts that a being has thousands of selves, and warns that a beginning teacher needs to try on several masks before finding one that fits.

Parini’s premise is situated in the assumption that the classroom is a type of theater and that the teacher is a performer. In fact, Parini acknowledges that teaching is “a conscious act of self-creation, [a] self-performance.”

Parini shares his thoughts about parallels between the crafts of writing and teaching. Using the example of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, Parini illustrates Heaney’s connection to the impressive poets who preceded him—“the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley, and the compressed, visionary lyricism of William Butler Yeats.” Parini indicates that the mature voice of Heaney has swallowed up and digested these precursors, but they remain a part of him, ingredients of his own voice. It is no stretch, then, when the author writes that the same applies to teaching.

Parini is convincing in his statement that “you learn to teach by listening closely to your own teachers, by taking on their voices, self-consciously or not, by imitating them, digesting them to the point where they become part of your own voice and persona.” The Art of Teaching is more than fluid analogies and instructional metaphors, however. Though not quite a step-by-step handbook for the classroom teacher—it’s a more elegant creation than that—Parini’s work still offers plenty of practical advice for frontline instructors.

For instance, one subsection is titled, “By Their Clothes We Shall Know Them: On Academic Dress.” The contention offered by Parini is that “clothes have their own syntax and vocabularies.” Citing his acquaintance with novelist and Oxford Fellow Iris Murdoch, Parini pegs Murdoch as “the most poorly dressed academic” he ever knew. “She often had dinner at my house,” writes Parini, “and invariably look[ed] disheveled, in a heavy wool skirt and baggy pullover.” Nevertheless, Murdoch’s was an apparently accepted collegiate fashion statement; Parini states that he noticed a lot of female academics dressed quite similarly in Oxford as well as in other academic institutions.

The Art of Teaching is a subtle and moving treatise on a profession that is singularly sublime, as well as essential to the transmission of culture and knowledge. Although the book is aimed mainly at higher educators, everyone who teaches anyone will undoubtedly benefit from Parini’s pedagogical wisdom.

By Ben Miles, Ed.D.

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest treatise, is a book that is certain to open readers’ eyes. The subtitle, The Power of Thinking without Thinking, is a koanlike synopsis of Gladwell’s premise. In a text of 254 pages—not including eight pages of notes, three pages of acknowledgments, and nearly a dozen pages of index—Blink comprises such unrelated topics as sixth century B.C. Kouroi statues, couples therapy, police shootings, and auditions for a world-class philharmonic orchestra.

The book’s title refers to the rapidness of the response of our eyelids to stimulation. The analogy between rapid eye coverage and quick cognition is well stated. Moreover, Gladwell’s approach to the subject is eclectic and engaging, yet the sum of his various stories and examples don’t quite add up to a full and cogent picture.

Gladwell’s thesis is surprisingly simple. Using a concept in rapid cognition known as thin-slicing—“the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience”—Gladwell takes us on a journey that is both fascinating and frustrating.

It is fascinating to be exposed to the plethora of information that the author’s research has yielded. For instance, marriage therapist John Gottman is cited in Blink as a premier thin-slicer. Working with over 3,000 married couples in his so-called love lab near the University of Washington campus where he is a professor of psychology, Gottman has developed what is now referred to as SPAFF (for specific affect), a coding system consisting of twenty categories of emotions that a married couple might express in the course of a conversation. So accurate is Gottman’s design that within three minutes of a couple’s talk, it can be predicted with “fairly impressive accuracy who [is] going to get divorced…”

Indeed, Gottman has isolated what he has termed the Four Horsemen of relational disintegration: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. But of this quatrain of behaviors, contempt is by far the number-one omen of a marital dissolution.

“If you can measure contempt [insults, eye-rolling, etc.], you don’t need to know every detail of the couple’s relationship,” Gladwell writes. As he phrases it, we zero in on what really matters, and as he says, this is the benefit and power of thin-slicing.

What is frustrating about Gladwell’s unique read on cognition is that it is not, in spite of its alluring and simplistic title and subtitle, a how-to-manual. The reader is informed about a human being’s “optimal state of arousal,” i.e., when the heart pumps at a rate of 115 to 145 beats a minute. At this pace, one is more likely to be at peak performance. Above 145 ticks per 60 seconds, however, complex motor skills start to break down. But the best remedy Gladwell has to offer us as a means of avoiding such a breakdown comes from former army officer and author, Dave Grossman, and that is: “You must rehearse.”

Nevertheless, Blink is a compact and compelling book. It is easily comprehended and a quick read, thanks to Gladwell’s swift storytelling. For those interested in an uncanny peek into human consciousness, Blink is both informative and entertaining, and is now available in paperback.

(Little, Brown and Company, 2005, ISBN 03-316-17232-4)