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Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness is a worthwhile read that may well change your life. You should buy this book.

Reviewer: Mark Lamendola

This book is a "must read." On the downside, the author is a bit wordy at times. But at other times, his writing simply sparkles. This book provides useful information, compelling case histories, and thought-inspiring statements.

What's most valuable about this book is its message. Just prior to writing this review, I exchanged e-mails with a business-person who provided several accounts of customers and suppliers who are petty, rude, and selfish. Such behavior seems to be "normal," these days. We need look only to accounts of road rage and powerful government bureaucrats to support the contention that people are, well, contentious.

But, is this the way humans are headed? Or is there something else developing for us? And what about you, personally? How can you create greater levels of kindness in the world around you? Barasch provides solid insights into this, backed by extensive information that includes clinical research.

This isn't another of those "follow this simple formula" books written just to provide additional income for a motivational speaker. Far from it (Barasch isn't a motivational speaker, for one thing). Though highly credentialed to write a book that leads you to contemplate your world view, Barasch doesn't claim to have the magic answers. Instead, he takes various aspects of compassion (devoting a chapter to each) and supplies some amazing case histories that provide lessons for all of us.

A particularly moving case history involves the father of a murdered 43-year old woman--and her killer. You might expect a parent to completely hate the murderer of his child. And, that was this father's first reaction. But hatred is a hot coal that burns those who hold it. This father, instead, extended love to the murderer. The results of that serve as a living legacy to the murdered daughter. She had devoted her life to helping others, and now--through the man who murdered her--this woman's father is working minor miracles in the lives of many prisoners.

Another example is a camp for teenagers. But, not just any teenagers--this is a camp that brings Israeli and Palestinian teens together. You can imagine the difficulties there--kids from two cultures that each demonize and hate the other to the point where people strap bombs on their bodies to blow up "the enemy." Yet, the people who run the camp program were able to make some surprising breakthroughs. This story alone justifies the book, but there's more.

A constant theme throughout the book is we have the power to choose to love--or to hate. We aren't trapped into one or the other, unless we let ourselves be trapped. But many of us are trapped, and we're trapped in a room constructed of something negative, such as pettiness or hatred. We're trapped because we simply cannot find the door. Fortunately, Barasch has some great ideas to help us not only see that door, but to throw it wide open.

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