Rating: 
Summary: A life enhancing book!
Review: A life enhancing book! If you're confused about your life's direction this book is a must. It's holistic and inventive in it's approach, innovative in it's suggestions and full of wonderful inspiration from luminaries throughout history. It's also well written, well designed and easy to read. By encouraging positive personal responsibility books like this help make our world a better place and individual lives more fulfilling.
Rating: 
Summary: Career Goulash
Review: A very difficult text to review, the narrative bears first examination. The lack of paragraph structure throughout the entire book demonstrates excellent examples of anti-patterns--what a writer should not do. Many sentences are not grammatically correct: "Self-reliance is critical to creating structures we can live with, and to remaining free of confining structures imposed by others (or even those of our own making)." This ironic example "begs the question." Boldt declares his conversational style "...is at times unconventional." He rationalizes that the use of slang and "nontraditional punctuation is intended to enhance a conversational tone." Boldt continues to whip the reader with the writer's tools in trade, cutting a sentence into pieces and into vague phrases with gluttonous use of commas. Like the poor grammer, the book hurts for careful word usage: "It is said that the entire manifest universe arises out of the living emptiness of this cosmic womb energy." The word "Universe" does not need "entire" or "manifest" to help clarify the meaning of universe. The universe is all existing things.(Emphasis on ".") "cosmic" and "womb" are energy, in myth and in empiricism. Past further clarification beyond the preceding corrections we can only be lost and cannot help but feeling Boldt is trying to tell us something. Word usage hurts no more than the content, either. When addressing such a simple and complex subject as Zen, art, Tao, and all things seemingly spiritual, Boldt applies a Universalist approach, garnering one idea from another, blending one doctrine with a different practioner's opinion, and creating a goulash that begins to taste rather unpleasant. As a further note, Zen is _not_ a spirituality. Tao could potentially be considered spiritual and is not certain, and Noam Chomsky is the expert of myth and symbol--Joseph Campbell, not. The text does have many valuable morsals. The latter half of the book falls into Boldt's specialty of career help. His sections involving self-assessment, planning, self-development, and goal-setting prevail to make the book useful. Boldt's bibliography exhibits a responsiblity and knowledge of his chosen expertise: career consulting.
Rating: 
Summary: Leaving the Rat Race? Take This Guide
Review: After an unsuccessful and frustrating career as a cog in the corporate wheel, I took some time off, bought this book, and sat down with a pen. I came away with much more than I expected. The book's exhaustive charts, lists and essays helped me to focus my skills and desires into self-reflection, to figure out who I really was and what I wanted to do. The second half of the book is filled with information on grant-writing, government aids, and other practical tools to help you realize your dreams. If you don't want to support McWorld, let this book lead you down the path to realizing your full potential.
Rating:
Summary: Want to live the life you were born to live? Read this book!
Review: After reading many career planning guides, I have found that "Zen and the Art of Making a Living" is perhaps the most thoughtful, life-changing book ever written on the subject. While many books are geared towards assisting you in fixing your career problem, whether it be by finding a "better job" or finding a job that fits your personality type. The "Zen" book goes deeper than mere quick-fix career books by presenting us the opportunity to go on a journey to discover our purpose for being here. Given the time we are living in now, I think more and more people are recognizing their desire for meaningful work. Go on the journey, there is nothing to lose -- you have only to learn more about yourself, your world, and your destiny!
Rating:
Summary: Want to live the life you were born to live? Read this book!
Review: After reading many career planning guides, I have found that "Zen and the Art of Making a Living" is perhaps the most thoughtful, life-changing book ever written on the subject. While many books are geared towards assisting you in fixing your career problem, whether it be by finding a "better job" or finding a job that fits your personality type. The "Zen" book goes deeper than mere quick-fix career books by presenting us the opportunity to go on a journey to discover our purpose for being here. Given the time we are living in now, I think more and more people are recognizing their desire for meaningful work. Go on the journey, there is nothing to lose -- you have only to learn more about yourself, your world, and your destiny!
Rating: 
Summary: Almost painfully difficult to read.
Review: Although I have a four year degree in English, I felt strained trying to read this book. Everything is so long and drawn out - by the time I finish a paragraph, I forget where we started. Part One about killed me. I'm 34 years old, in the middle of the country, working from home. I don't need to soul search and philosophize - I know who I am, and I have no patience.
Part 2 did have some useful information, but I was so burnt out from part one, my enthusiasm was drained. Will keep it as a resource book, but will never "read" it again.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing short of brilliant!
Review: Boldt is a true visionary. This book has the makings of a new bible. It is a slow read, but that is because every paragraph is jam-packed with riveting truth. The author's comprehension of philosophies and religions combines with his very practical insight into modern Western culture and society to paint a scathing picture of our life today. Fortunately, he offers just as much incisiveness on how to thrive in the midst of it. Very few titles, VERY FEW, have ever affected me to this degree. This text is a must read for anyone struggling with the current paradigm of time clock work in 20th century capitalism.
Rating:
Summary: Making a living VS. having a *life*
Review: Boldt's little subsection about "The Little King" complex/ideal that Western society tends to program us to pursue (ie. the TRUE "American Dream:" every person a compulsive control-freak striving to make himself master of his own little universe, vis-a-vis the cookie-cutter tract home in the suburbs and the endless remote controls and the children/spouse to lord over) is simply dead on and worth the price of the whole book! Boldt prepares us for the inevitable "know thyself" component with an incisive but admittedly lengthy section on "knowing thy environment, from which ye are produced"---excellent social history and cultural analysis, guided by a fair bit of Eastern philosophy. This is the foundation, from which self-knowledge and thereafter self-guidance can grow. It's not a quick or easy process, so those of you with your TV-lobotomized 15-second attention spans who are looking for a quick fix in career planning should probably look elsewhere. This book excels mainly in helping you figure out how to *have a life,* rather than how-to-make-as-many-bucks-as-possible-in-today's-corporate-jungles-without-turning-yourself-into-a-hopelessly-miserable-wreck-of-a-human-being, which is unfortunately what most people hope for when they turn to a "career guidance" resource. Which is the only reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5.
Rating:
Summary: How anyone could give this less than 5 stars is beyond me...
Review: By far, the best career "Bible" I have ever seen. I refer to it regularly, as I shape my life as a self-employed person. It isn't just a motivational book, but is jam-packed with the real "work" of taking an introspective, spiritual approach to acjieving a life-work balance.
Rating:
Summary: How anyone could give this less than 5 stars is beyond me...
Review: By far, the best career "Bible" I have ever seen. I refer to it regularly, as I shape my life as a self-employed person. It isn't just a motivational book, but is jam-packed with the real "work" of taking an introspective, spiritual approach to acjieving a life-work balance.
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