Review: A New Earth–Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)

3 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ

New EarthBunnyRabbit4 has it right, additional observations, May 30, 2009

Eckhart Tolle

I cannot improve on BunnyRabbit4's review and will not try. What I want to do here is add a few things that are not covered in that excellent review.

1) For those fascinated by Oprah's Book List, I have put together a three page word document that lists every book she recommended from 1996 to 2008, along with links to their Amazon page and a short evaluative comment. I prepared this list as part of an short-term examination of Oprah as a cultural measure. Visit Earth Intelligence Network and see the top headline under Cultural Intelligence.

2) Directly relevant to the evaluation of this book as recommended by Oprah is our evaluation of the list. Below is a summary in chronological order, the number of books in parenthesis, then one line (see one line for each book at the list online.

1996 (3) women far from ideal, alone
1997 (11) children in a tough world
1998 (8) pregnancy, needs and fears, aloneness, secrets and nightmares
1999 (8) family tragedy & triumph, racism, secrets, deranged, love
2000 (9) competing desires, ties that bind, love and betrayal, alone
2001 (6) cruelty and corruption, unspeakable injustices, prison, etc.
2002 (2) two black hereoines, five generations of one family's sin
2003 (2) two men joined, three generations, two love triangles
2004 (4) “classics” (Buck, Tolstoy, McCullers, GG Marquez–life as novel
2005 (4) unflinching exploration, troubled characters, one con job
2006 (1) Elie Wiesel on surviving a Nazi death camp as a teen-ager
2007 (5) good versus evil, love, men and women, racial tensions
2008 (2) webacst a journey plus webcast awakening

And then we have this book. Over-all I find a great deal of value in her efforts to cope with the past and the present, but very little cultural value and not much in the way of discretion about choices.

A much better book than this one, superior in every possible way, is
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential.

Other books I recommend that are superior to this one with respect to inspiring hope within both self-fulfillment and community include:
Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence
The New Golden Rule: Community And Morality In A Democratic Society
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover))

I have reviewed and summarized each of the above books, follow the link. As with most of my reviews, each of the above reviews has links to ten other books.

I am not able to link, but also recommend two books I have sponosred:
ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creqating a Prosperous World at Peace.

FREE OBAMA (the new meme–see the image below):

Read BunnyRabbit Review:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R2YCTES60O5PO7/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

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