Rating: 
Summary: What's "better" Than Needleman?
Review: I've read this book a couple of times, and yes, I agree with my friends that the writing is a bit weak at the beginning--but the whole is very very strong. Needleman is excellent: catch his occasional lectures at various venues in SF. Overall, I think the notion that money developed in spiritual communities for the sake of handling material needs in an efficient manner is valid. I've handed this book out to many friends, and frankly, other than Michael Phillip's The Seven Laws of Money, there are not that many worthwhile titles out there. The landscape is filled with incrediblly preposterous junk like Suze Ormon.
Rating: 
Summary: My Riches for an Editor--and a Better Choice
Review: Jacob Needleman does have many moments of eloquence, but unfortunately he suffers, as many professors do, from the art of filling up space. While this craft may come in handy during a college lecture, I prefer writers who edit, edit, and edit--leaving us with a polished gem. If you're looking for a wise and tightly written guide to financial matters, which offers both philosophical/spiritual insight and practical guidance, I strongly recommend The Mindful Money Guide. It tickled me while also giving lots of great advice.
Rating:
Summary: A wake up call for those who live in the market economy.
Review: Needleman presents a philosophical discussion of the role of money in personal life. Rather than blanketly dismissing the material side of our existence he seeks to demonstrate the necessary balance between the spiritual and the mundane.The book is strongly based in traditional philosophy as the author attempts to clarify, sythesize, and interpret classic works that support (or can be made to support) his premise. In some instances there is inadeqate discussion of the philosophical context on which the arguments are based. A portion of the work is a narrative which I found distracting. The book is an attempt to present a philosophical treatise to non-philosophers - perhaps the author should have either written an academic text or resigned himself to more adequately developing his thesis in the beginning with more limited supporting material. Overall this is a provocative book for those who are searching to resolve the apparent conflicts between the spiritual and the material. How likely is this to occur in a global economy built on consumerism? An interesting sequel to the work might be an edited volume of articles by economists, sociologists, theologians and anthropologists related to the implications and feasibility of infusing some degree of moderation into this market-oriented world.
Rating: 
Summary: The light of spirit shines over a worldly subject!
Review: The great challenge of a real philosopher is to bring philosophy into everyday life. This is synonymous to helping people attain a state of incresed awareness.
Money is a subject which tends to blur our awareness of our private lives, our professional careers and social problems as well. For instance, here, in Brasil, the government rates money as the most important national problem. Maybe this is how it should be, maybe not...
When I lecture, teach or write about business management, I try to show people that money is something that has to be dealt with, but is not everything. It is not easy, because there is a tendency to radicalism: some people (the so called materialists) think money is everything, while others think money is secondary.
Needleman's book performs an alchemical transformation, showing how money can be changed into a means to human development. This miracle can be performed if we increase our awareness of its role in our lives.
This book is everything a good philosophy book should be: it is pleasat to read and maintains the reader curious until the last page. It is clearly written, but faces the difficult questions, for which there are no easy answers. It contains references for peole who want to go further into the ideas it presents.
This is one of Needleman's best accomplished books!
Rating:
Summary: Get the Cliff Notes
Review: There are good ideas, interesting asides, and new philosophical propositions to spare in Money and the Secret of Life. The basic premise--that money is a technology invented, not to accumulate wealth, but to realize human potential--is certainly worth our attention. Needleman is best describing money as the great tool of capitalism and capitalism as a great metaphysical system. The problem with Money and the Meaning of Life is that Jacob Needleman set out to write an inquiry into the spiritual potential of money, then sketched out a history of Western religious thought, and ended up writing a first person narrative full of punch lines thinly disguised as surprise philosophical discoveries. Mixing Max Weber, Guradjieff, Maimonodes, King Solomon, and an anonymous businessman (who really DOES know the meaning of life) could have been a rollercoaster ride full of unexpected connections and insights; what it actually ends up being is long-winded, self-conscious, and pretentious. In terms of the capitalist object, a good product, but, word for word, not exactly a terrific value.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary... provided you can *really* understand it.
Review: This book is extraordinary. Literally. It takes a mercyless look at the "unbalanced" importance human beings are giving to money nowadays, particularly in the american society. Needleman himself describes his most intimate feelings towards the power of money, and this he does objectively, corageously, without lie and -most important- with enlightning. Unfortunately I guess, not a tenth of the readers will be able to fully appreciate the unvaluable ideas (in fact many of them were new to me) contained in this book. If you are ready to stop self-deceiving as what to the incidence of money in your life refers, or if you already have, then you should read this book, no matter what.
Rating:
Summary: in God we trust-fund
Review: This book was an enjoyable exploration of what money means to us and what it stands for...and why it has fallen into the cultural shadow. The author makes a convincing explanation for the numinous power of wealth, a power partly due to the fact that two thousand years of Christianity turned away from matter and the body, which have now had their revenge via the symbol of the almighty dollar, America's real religion. I almost gave this book a 3 because 1. it has no index, and I hate that; and 2. no effort was made to edit out gender-biased language ("man," "the nature of man," etc.). Oh, and 3. the publisher needs to spend more on the paper: it's no good for penciling notes on. I'm not certain that the question of the integrity of one's work comes down to the quality of one's attention, as the author seems to maintain. The dilemma, say, of a scientist who designs nuclear weapons and then realizes one day--perhaps when jobs are scarce--that the work is eating up his soul even though it supports his family becomes a real dilemma, not only a problem of the ego that vanishes in the light of understanding. Doing a job he feels to be evil consciously doesn't make it any less evil to him; and consciously quitting and letting his family starve while he looks for work hugely impacts them. In fact, it's his heightened awareness and its unwillingness to "turn away from truth" that deprives him of his ability to feel good about his integrity no matter what he decides. Needleman is right, though, that we must make peace with our relationship with money if we're to heal the split between our physical requirements and our thirst for meaning. To do that we need more, not less, "materialism," a more conscious probing into matter, the body, the things of the world, which today's electronicized economics have gone far toward dematerializing. The book reminds me a bit of a quotation by Walter Kaufmann, who wrote about Shakespeare's solution to the dilemma of vocation vs. occupation (remember that, like Beethoven, the world's pre-eminent playwright was also an efficient businessman): It has almost become a commonplace that the modern artist
has lost contact with his audience and that the public no
longer supports him as in previous ages...Shakespeare came
to terms with the obtuseness of his public: he gave his pearls
a slight odor of the sty before he cast them. Far from cheap-
ening his art, he turned the challenge of a boorish, lecherous,
and vulgar audience to advantage and increased the richness
and the subtlety of tragedy so vastly that age cannot wither it,
nor custom stale its infinite variety. -- Kaufmann, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO EXISTENTIALISM
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