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Rating: 
Summary: This is THE book on Friendship!
Review: I bought this book becuase i thought I did not have enough "connections" in my life. I simply did not know where to begin. How does one make friends? I have a lot of friends but not very many close friends. Why? I wanted to work on this and this book definitely give one the tools to understand friendship and improve the connections in all levels of my life. This book begins by discussing how connections of all types in our lives have eroded and how this erosion actually impacts us. I think it is very readable and well done. Dr Brehony is obviously a very intelligent and insightful person. The one thing I find particularly refreshing is that Dr Brehonny gives you specific ideas and strategies for making friends and connections of all sorts. She really explains the mechanics of friendship. Many self help books discuss ideas on such cerebral terms that there is very little information that one can specifically apply. This book, from this perspective, is very practical. I definitely recommend this book! I know you will find it interesting and, depending on your situation, very useful. Thanks, Dr Brehony, for making my life a little better!
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great
Review: I enjoyed this book but had hoped for more. Like another amazon.com reviewer, I was a bit bored by the large portion of the book dedicated to the explanation of why connections are important and showing that interconnectedness in on the decline in our society. I assume that if someone is buying a book called "Living a Connected Life," he/she already believes that there is a need for forging stronger bonds amongst people. I was looking for more ideas -- real, "do-able" things -- of how to make my community stronger: to better connect with those around me in a meaningful way. In a nutshell, I wish she had focused less on "WHY ONE SHOULD Live a connected life" and more one "HOW TO Live a connected life."
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: I enjoyed this book but had hoped for more. Like another amazon.com reviewer, I was a bit bored by the large portion of the book dedicated to the explanation of why connections are important and showing that interconnectedness in on the decline in our society. I assume that if someone is buying a book called "Living a Connected Life," he/she already believes that there is a need for forging stronger bonds amongst people. I was looking for more ideas -- real, "do-able" things -- of how to make my community stronger: to better connect with those around me in a meaningful way. In a nutshell, I wish she had focused less on "WHY ONE SHOULD Live a connected life" and more one "HOW TO Live a connected life."
Rating: 
Summary: Merely a display of knowledge
Review: I have always found one or two nuggets of interesting information in a book that was otherwise not worth reading. So it's with this one, yet they are tiny nuggets indeed. Overall, this book is a waste of money. The author approaches the subject from a very limited, narrow perspective. She starts by having the reader wade through all the statistics and quotes she (probably) used for her doctoral thesis, more than half of the book. Hoping that she will eventually get to the point, I just kept on reading. The remaining 40% makes this recitation of other people's material fall flat on its face. The author fails to understand that connection, or the lack of it, in our modern day world, is not only caused by, as she perceives it, lack of community and personal social skills and emotional challenges from deprived childhoods. Living a connected life is (also) about transcending the fear of lack of resources and of death. The author doesn't bother to examine any other strata of society but her own, upper class, caucasian background. As a result, she misses out on the changes in society that affect especially the middle class in the US, the foundation of community in this country for the past fifty or so years. In addition, she fails to address the fundamental problems that affect even her own social class. In my opinion, people are afraid to establish connections when they perceive others as potential enemies, when they think others will take away their "food," literally and figuratively. Only those who are humble enough to overcome this fear (and their emotional challenges, lack of social skills and what not, as the author correctly points out) can establish meaningful connections. Community is ultimately about creating a healthy balance between individual development and sharing of resources, skills and inspiration. The author fails to cover even a single attempt at creating healthy community living, many of which happened right here in the US, many others in countries around the world, in Western and Eastern societies. Instead, she falls back on tribal communities whose origins many are already familiar with and whose philosophies are very far removed from Western societal values and principles. Covering a complex and multifaceted issue as the "relationship that lasts a lifetime" is probably a daunting task (I've never tried it myself). But I believe there is much, much more to cover if one wants to get a better understanding of all its aspects than Ms. Brehony has bothered to investigate. Reviewers outside of Amazon.com led me to believe that Ms. Brehony was on to something. Unfortunately, it's back to the drawing board.
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