Rating: 
Summary: Significant flaws don't outweigh the overall brilliance.
Review: Focusing on the book's successes rather than its failures, I would strongly recommend it, even to those people with a brain in their head who aren't just looking to get suckered in by some new-age schiester.Most of the negative reviews listed below make some very good points, but still strike me as a bit harsh overall. To take an illustrative example: Wilber's comments on Darwinian evolution are rightly criticized, but this criticim distracts from the reality that any problems with Darwinian theory are quickly exploited by religious fundamentalists promoting a god that fulfills all their "egoic inclinations." Wilber is quick to point out that this is a non-sequiter: if there is a "creative force at work in the Kosmos", there is no reason to personify it or identify it with any particular cultural tradition's creation myth. To me, that point of analysis much more valuable than his using a sloppy example of "half a wing." Point of fact: Wilber didn't come up with the notion of "punctuated evolution"; S.J. Gould did, in response to the nature of the fossil record. Futhermore, even assuming that all of evolution is fully explained by Darwinian natural selection (which I believe it is) the trends towards complexity and inegration that Wilber asserts are at work are still sufficient to support his statement that "creativity builds to Kosmos", although admittedly the structure of that phrase does imply a semi-personified actor called "creativity." But a couple more critical points, just to be fair: Wiber's comments on "co-created" gender relations across culture types fails to recognize (as feminists have) the unfortunate critical role that physical violence played and still plays in defining gender roles. Also, his notion of a completely non-relational, undifferentiated "autistic" self in infancy was rejected by infant researchers and eventually by M. Mahler, whose theory of development Wilber seems to be relying upon.
Despite plenty of foibles like these, Wilber's overall vision is impressive.
Rating: 
Summary: A little intellectually sloppy
Review: Here's the basic problem. "The standard, glib, neo-Darwinian explanation of natural selection -- absolutely nobody believes this anymore...Take the standard notion that wings simply evolved from forelegs. It takes perhaps a hundred mutations to produce a functional wing from a leg -- a half-wing will not do. A half-wing is no good as a leg and no good as a wing -- you can't run and you can't fly. It has no adaptive value whatsoever. In other words, with a half-wing you are dinner." Has he tried telling that to the hundreds of species that use webbing between fingers and toes to glide? The reptilian ancestors of modern birds that had no feathers, and instead used skin stretched in between arms and body to move air? The book is good, but this type of shoddy pseudo-science just makes it another self-help book for those looking for easy answers, without having to exercise their critial reasoning. And making a claim that no one believes the glib neo-Darwinian explanation means that there is no neo-Darwinian explanation, because there's no one to make that explanation! Oops. Nice try, but I'll stick with more meaty matter.
Rating: 
Summary: Snake oil philosophy
Review: No, this is not philosophy as it is understood by the grown-ups, although it surely is a dumbed down strand of Hegelianism (what else could it be with such a cute title?). This is a kind of New Age chirping for people who prefer not to strain their brains excessively and to feel well with the least mental expense. How does one earn a reputation in these circles? Easy: by preaching ignorance to the ignorant. Here are a few examples that should serve as a caution to everyone who might otherwise be taken for a ride, as I surely was. If you are a Hegelian, at some point you must introduce the 'Spirit'. Wilber does it pretty early by discussing evolution. The wing, according to him, is useful only when fully developed ' a half-wing is no good. Such a sophisticated instrument could only have evolved with the help of a supreme agency. This is an argument from a Jehovah Witnesses tract: the real science points out that even a quarter-wing (as well as a quarter-eye) is usually better than none if it gives the animal the slightest edge over the wingless. And it does: somebody should have shown Wilber a flying squirrel. Introducing his theory of 'holons' Wilber states that matter is infinitely divisible (and compounded). The real science, of course, has discovered otherwise: the string is the smallest element of matter. The discussion of the Big Bang and of what could have 'preceded' it is altogether laughable. What is missing throughout the book is an awareness that every proposition is worthless unless provable. When mentioning the Axial Age with its saints and prophets, Wilber studiously omits every name connected with the Judeo-Christian tradition. One feels an agenda, but it is never stated explicitly. Sneaky. Last but not least: the whole book is written in the form of a dialog, but the only purpose of the questioner is to suck up to the answerer; he never advances any intelligent objection, never mentions any contrarian authority with the exception of some feminists. This must be the easiest way of philosophical discourse. I must confess that I picked up this book because its main thesis, the poverty of the reductionism, is close to my heart. But I would rather stay with the reductionists as long as they respect my intelligence.
Rating: 
Summary: What Philosophy Was Meant To Be
Review: Cautiously, this book absorbs a great deal of knowledge and synthesizes it with considerable alacrity, acuity, conciseness, and coherence. The book will be attractive to a large number of readers who are looking for an "integrative" approach to knowledge. As one with a philosophical bent, I appreciated the inclusion of Whitehead's Process Reality and Bergson's Creative Evolution, which have largely been abandoned by collegiate, philosophical departments. Einstein and Darwin are also included. Science, philosophy, wisdom, psychology, and spiritualism are all integrated into a nice coherent system. My only reservations are linguistic, which often is hokey, and tone, which is often authoratative rather than heuristic.
Rating:
Summary: Comic and Accessible
Review: ABOE remains a great 1996 landmark popular summary of Ken Wilber's continually evolving thought and work to that date -- a summary that could keep you up in one all night sitting and, cliche that it is, change and reorient your life and knowledge within his four quadrant evolutionary and developmental scaffold of inner and outer existence. Enjoy a great sense of humor here in a question and answer format, in what amounts to something of a litmus test designed to find yourself and encourage your further development in his 10 fulcrum model of human cognitive development, then take on the weightier tome Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.
Rating:
Summary: A little learning can be a beauitful thing
Review: Allow me to address the review from "A reader" from Tennessee. With all due respect, I believe he/she has misunderstood the entire message of Mr. Wilber's integral-transformative theory. Wilber's idea is to assemble all of the orienting conclusions from each field, which have incredibly important truths to tell us. For the moment we assume that these are, indeed, true. These truths are then assembled into chains and networks of interlocking conclusions into a coherent vision. He is open in his praise and admiration of these truths, but stresses that they are only partial, and often incredibly narrow perspectives. It is true that he often seems closest to a Zen Buddhist ideology, however his praise of organized religion in general, Freud, behaviorism and any number of schools of thought are stricly qualified. Wilber, as an example, is brutally critical of behaviorism's narrow interpretation of observable human behavior. He gives it credit for it's narrow scientific truth, while citing it's laughable culpability as a "world view." He believes this type of reductionism is ultimately destructive. Does Wilber just "take what he wants" from these ideologies? No. He honors the truths that come from one "quadrant" or another in his model and attemts meld this deep fragmentation into a more wholistic vision. It becomes fairly obvious which fields, theories and schools of thought fall into which quadrants, if you grasp the concept. If you demand that Wilber conform to any kind of "universal" dogma you will be dissapointed and miss the message of perhaps the greatest modern philosopher of our time. This is a book of startling clarity and depth of understanding. He won't placate or coddle you, he gives it to you straight, and then it's up to you to try your own experiment. You must do the WORK.
Rating:
Summary: a little learning is a dangerous thing
Review: For those who don't know (it seems likely based on these reviews that many don't), this is the same Ken Wilber who, not so long ago, was zealously promoting the works of the meglomaniacal cult leader Da Free John, a man who makes the usual claims for his type: to be the greatest avatar of all time, in possession of miraculous powers, and so on. Many of Wilber's ideas, here in Brief History of Everything and all of his later works, are lifted directly from "Master" Da, right down to the terminology, but he hardly stops there: he simultaneously manages to believe in literal Hindu-style reincarnation, Freudianism, Zen Buddhism, behavioursim, and any number of other things, dodging their inherent contradictions by taking only what he wants of each.His vaunted system is little more than a lot of decoration disguising a stitching-together of Freud and Piaget with Da and Aurobindo; correspondences to what he here and in later works calls "other quadrants" are always suggested but never specified. Similarly, his supposedly "inclusive" model simply ignores vast areas of the world religious traditions that contradict his theory, such as all of Western esotericism and the nearly universal idea that the proper number of levels of consciousness (his primary theme) is seven. That the seams in this crazy quilt are seemingly invisible to so many is due in part to the overspecialized (mis)education we are provided with; most of Wilber's readers probably aren't familiar enough with the vast territories he covers to realize that he subtly distorts all he touches to shoehorn it into his model. He comes across here and elsewhere as a self-assured filing cabinet stuffed full of data; but he never provides us with a single testable hypothesis, only a belief system consisting of a vague doctrine of inevitable progress. It is this in particular that makes his system so appealing to the academics, corporate CEOs and limosine new-agers that endorse it; it reinforces all their most cherished illusions. This is not to say that his books are without merit; his observations are spot-on when he isn't defending his precious system, and he builds a sort of holistic verbal bridge to places the intellectually or spiritually lazy will find new, but for those serious about transformation it is a bridge to nowhere.
Rating:
Summary: Good!
Review: I think the hardest critics of Wilber are the ones who do not consider someone as an author unless he/she is a hands-on scientist, artist or an academic title holder. Well, the purpose of this book is to present a theory covering many things that are already part of mankind's common heritage. Very few scientists -unfortunately- have time and/or stimuli to go through such grand amount of information and come up with a theory. As a non-academic in classical sense, Wilber does much more than many of the academics. I am an M.D. dealing with spiritual and psychological issues of patients and due to the nature of my work I am always in need of a deeper understanding of many aspects of life. Wilber's book is one of the resources that I use to achive that. Good work Mr. Wilber!
Rating: 
Summary: Wilber knocks flatland science, but can't get off the plane
Review: Noted for his vast and brilliant synthesis of many disciplines, however, no one familiar with the topics he refers to can agree. It is the work of a Male-Western Science-Christian-Freudian who still believes the Truth of all that but also is aware that they aren't the whole Truth. He yearns for the subjective, but can not trust it beyond reports by those (like Freudians) who can clean the subjective of its unconscious 'deceits' and other limits. Einstein wrote of mystery as the heart of great science and art. This is the personal (subjective) experience of creative scientists, artists, religious types and everyone else who isn't limited solely to what they read in the library. This insightful group doesn't include Ken Wilber. Wilber cites many authors and theories, though those familiar with those works will not recognize them from Wilber's remarks. His fundamental overview of all systems is based in the simple double dichotomy of Cartesian axes, though he is totally unaware of the circumscribed circle of the horizon which is always implicit in such a format. Even within his four-fold model of the subjective/objective individual and social, he doesn't notice that really he is only speaking of the physical sciences, psychology and the social sciences. They study his four realms, but of course they are all academic objective sciences. The emotional angst he unleashes against "flatland" views of science only can only be his own subjective pain trying to break through his defenses. His is a totally flatland synthesis, confusing flat circles for spheres and higher dimensions. It is tough to revere Freud as truth and hope to find any sense of wholeness or subjective integrity.
Rating:
Summary: Wilber's vision is unique and important
Review: There are some people that suggest that Wilber has been too repetitive in his last few books. That he's simply been repeating the same basic refrain over and over again. I can understand that criticism, but I disagree with it. Wilber's theory of integration is both complex and important, and I find it incredibly useful to have new books in which he expands the examples of his theory. My own feeling is that the integral theory is a very important theory to understand, so the more in depth Wilber goes, and the various diffirent paths of exploration he goes at his thory from, the happier I am, as I feel like I have a greater grasp of what he's speaking about. As an aside, there is a wondeful novel called We All Fall Down by Brian Caldwell which seems to take quite a bit of Wilber's theory, and even mentions him several times in the book. The novel is a great example of a man caught trying to transform his life into something better, but who is able only to translate. It's about the frustration and difficulties in trying to move up to the next level of consciousness. Techinically, it's set in a Christian framework, but it elevates past that small structure and uses it to really bring home quite a few of Wilber's theories. It's a wonderful novel and I'd highly recomend it to any fan of Wilber.
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