The only downside to the book is if your looking for an actual meditation guide, to make you “10% happier” the way he claims…. There IS some meditation instruction at the back of the book, but its really just a pamphlet or booklets worth that he rewards you with for finishing his autobiography. If your seeking meditation instruction I would recommend “The Victorious Mind” by Dr Metivier which is choc full of good advice for growing your Brain power and staying mentally well. An exerpt from the Audio version

The comparison between the two books is, amusingly, rather like the authors own comparison between Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle

“…..Eckhart was befuddling because, while I believed he was sincere, I couldn’t tell if he was sane. With Deepak it was the opposite; I believed he was sane, but I couldn’t tell if he was sincere….”

I’d heard that Dan Harris came across in his book as arrogant and unpleasant, but honestly it was just amusing to me. He did come off as a narcissist, and I probably wouldn’t like him in real life, but he’s a pretty fun read. He is, however, In my OPINION an unreliable narrator…. I have no doubt that he smooths and dresses up his stories, but I was more interested in what he obscured, or left out of the narrative. I’ll get into that shortly but first I’ll finish up the actual review.

The Author takes us along with him as begins his career on TV, takes to snorting copious amounts of drugs to help cope with the stress, suffers a panic attack on air, starts therapy and first learns about meditation. We go with him thru his interviewing all the coolest players in the meditation field and taking up the practice himself and talking about how it made him happier.

He talks about his time on the religious beat, and his coverage of the Religious Right which was still ‘a thing’ that mattered politically at that time. We get to see his time as a war correspondent and his time back in the US. Its an interesting book, and could stand to be a bit shorter, but worth reading if your interested in the last days of TV.

OPINION

Anyone who has looked into the creation of the New Age movement will already know about the big money spent by folks like Rockefeller, the CIA, and various other actors to bring these ideas, and other new religious notions, to the masses. You can read both extremely Christian or more Secular takes on this. I believe it was Chris Knowles who once said that the New Age is now so mainstream that most of us don’t even notice it anymore. This book covers an important time period when the New Age was being brought into the minds of a mass audience, rather then a few rich people.

I believe that this book also covers the end of the Religious Right as a serious political force. It was a little jarring to read of Christian Boycotts going on at that time and ponder how quickly the power to punish Corporations in this way passed to the Left- specifically the LGBTQP lobby. I have no easy explanation for how fast this happened.

Its true that the Religious Right- and mainstream Churches in general- were aging rapidly at that time, but I can not help but feel that there was some form of internal subversion going on to discredit the movement. You get the gist of his coverage of the “religious beat” news and can not help but feel that there is a LOT of selective reporting and slanting of stories. I have no doubt that the Social Engineering thats been ongoing since before World War Two was still going on. Having a major star of the Religious Right exposed as a homosexual and drug user (which the Author documents) must have sped up this loss of prestige and influence, and as I recall, many Religious Right types were far too attached to the doomed war in Iraq and that destructive failure of a President, Bush II. I will throw in a link to the Commentator “Blackpilled” who has a take on how media changed attitudes toward Homsexuality.

I recall being puzzled, in those days, at how hard the Religious Right fought against gay marriage, thinking it was weird to focus so hard upon it. Having read how the Pro Marriage Equality organizations switched their well funded and slickly run operations over to the Trans Rights I can not help but agree that the Religious Right- whatever their faults- were correct about the slippery slope argument.

Also interesting was when the author (who is himself half Jewish) lays out that the people who popularized meditation to the US were quite often ethnically Jewish. He calls them the “Jew-Bu” and it strikes me that there was a similar ethnic quality to Psychotherapy in its early days, as well as Socialism and Russian Bolshevism. I can not help but wonder if there is something in Jewish culture that is especially suited to exploring and popularizing new ideas.

All in all a fun book, but rather a popcorn read. Worth getting at the Library but not worth buying unless your really interested in TV and Media personalities and how they live.