A Man's Journey to Simple Abundance

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY OCT 30, 2000

The creator of the mega-selling series aims to expand the simplicity movement's magic to the male market. With no less an ideal than bringing men and women closer together, Breathnach and collaborator Segell, an MSNBC and New York Daily News columnist, have assembled 52 original essays that succeed remarkably well in depicting men's feelings and complexity. The stellar contributors include novelists Rick Bass, Jim Harrison, Larry Brown, Richard Bausch and musician/activist Sting as well as a champion surfer, an army general, a rabbi (bestselling author Shmuley Boteach) and a hermit who writes amusingly on solitude. Distinguished across the board by their honesty, a number of the pieces are moving, such as Christopher Dickey's account of finally coming to terms with his father, poet James Dickey, or a businessman's empathetic account of his wife's battle with breast cancer. Others are funny (such as Roy Blount Jr.'s suggestion that weddings be centered around the groom in "The Great Groomal Expo"), enlightening (Benjamin Cheever on what he thinks makes a woman beautiful) and shocking (a photographer tells of brutal killings he witnessed in Soweto, South Africa). At times, however, the commentary linking the essays to Simple Abundance precepts of gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy feels imposed and unnecessary given the caliber of the writing and contributors' depth of feeling.