This book has such a promising title, and Pennington would have done well to have stuck with the topic it suggests. However, Pennington cannot seem to resist inserting his own political views and revealing his own religious bias in ways that seem totally out of place in a book that promises to "uncover the direct route to happiness and peace our age so desperately seeks." Perhaps Pennington is trying to demonstrate how intrusion of the "false self" can pollute an otherwise promising discussion?

The first intrusion appears in chapter four when Pennington interrupts his otherwise valuable discussion of the "evolution of human consciousness" to criticize former President Ronald Reagan for his funding of the failed star wars project, money that "could have funded a raised standard of living for every person on this planet." While I find this criticism valid (although a jarring turn in the tone of the discussion), it is completely overturned in the next chapter when in the midst of a very negative description of modern childhood, Pennington wonders "if the anti-child atmosphere of our age of birth control and abortion might not invade the womb and infect the developing child." It is odd that an author so concerned with the standard of living for the world's population would support a belief system that has done so much damage to the world's economic health and quest for physical survival. What is the cost of feeding, clothing, and educating a population out of control? Certainly Reagan's sins pale by comparison, and Pennington's criticisms become shamelessly hypocritical. Of course, he is feeding us the typical party line of the Catholic Church, a view that is anti-woman, anti-environment, and anti-humanity. But what can you expect from a world view that not only views women as unable to assume leadership positions within the church, but also unable to govern their own bodies?

Pennington also takes the time to criticize modern Biblical scholarship, referring to attempts to approach the Bible without religious bias as "ridiculous and arrogant humanistic and anthropocentric dissections of the Sacred Text." Pennington would do well to read William Johnston's newest book (which I did just prior to my unfortunate encounter with this one)in which Johnston finds value in such studies once they have been reintegrated into a religious context. Pennington instead offers this profound advice: "We need not waste any time giving any attention to these..."

There is some valuable discussion in this book when Pennington sticks to his subject, but there are too many tares growing among this wheat. I could only recommend this book to the patient and mature reader who is able to recognize chaff when he or she sees it.

This book contains the best explaination that I have read on the idea of the True Self and False Self...ideas that are crucial for understanding many of the writings in mystical spirituality and ourselves. I have read the book four times and every time I re-read it I find something more in it.

Fr. Pennington's ability to make accessible for the layman the often specialized vocabulary and ideas of the mystic is truly outstanding.

This book was assigned as our reading assignment for school when I was 13 years old. It has stood out in my mind ever since, because it was the first book I ever hated.

A born reader, since I was a small child I had read everything that came to hand, and could never afford to be fussy about the material - there simply weren't enough books around for that! At the time Pennington was assigned to my class, I was just happy to have something new to read. However, as the most boring book in the history of the world, Pennington was somewhat of a disappointment to me.

Probably the biggest problem was that I had no common experiences shared with Pennington. He was a boy, I was a girl. He was 17, I was 13. He lived in England, I lived in Australia. He was always in trouble, I was polite, quiet and well behaved. I think this book was an inappropriate choice for our class.

To be forced to read this book was absolute torture, and I gleefully disposed of my copy the second my assignment was complete. I have never forgotten the title, although most of the plot has long since disappeared from my memory. The long hours of boredom working on this in class and the feeling of dismay when I realised for the first time that I hated a book have always stayed with me.

The best bit about this book: The end. Because that's where it finished.

The worst bit about this book: The words. The author has assembled them in such a way that they are capable of turning any child off reading.

I too read the Pennington trilogy many years ago at school. I have recently chased them up again after 24 years and have once again enjoyed them immensly. (...) The relationship that evolves between Pat and Ruth is dealt with wonderful understanding on K M Peyton's part. Patrick Pennington's handling of his talents and the traumas of youth are masterfully portrayed and I have every intention of giving these books to my daughter to read. How I wish they were back in schools, as though times have changed, the angst of growing up has not altered very much at all, and triumph of spirit is timeless after all!

I read this book when I was 15 and it still brings back good memories every time I think about it. I am quite sad that it is out of print - it is essential 'young adult' reading! Pennington's story was compelling and I really loved the fact that this big, strong 'lout' could play the piano so brilliantly. I finished the book in one sitting and didn't want it to end. It is also very very funny in some parts. If you want a humourous and heartwarming story about a 17-year-old boy (whose genius at playing the piano gets him out of almost all his scrapes) and his friends, then hunt this book down and enjoy it!

Pennington has fanned an arid wind over a dry topic. Heads were banging on desks when we discussed this in my senior history seminar. Nevertheless, the second chapter is comendable for its brevity.

I disagree with the former review. Pennington's description of the papal government and law is thorough and simple enough for students to comprehend. The first chapter "Innocent and the Divine Autority of the Pope" is an important source. Innocent III was the first pope to regard himself as vicar of Christ. He established an important tradition of political thought in which the pope's authority was catagorized into 2 types: those powers that were human and those that were divine. The author discusses Inoccent's view of the law and government along with the other popes of the era, and important canonists like Huguccio.
Compared to Walter Ullman's study - "The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages" - Pennington's is a fresh breath of air. Want people to bang their heads and jump out the window? Let them read Ullman...

I have found this book to be more basic and tutorial of what is church,church bells,etc.as in earlier Chapters. This would be a book for new converts to the Roman Catholic Church. If one is searching for a deeper love and meaning as the title indicates,The Eucharist, wine of faith and bread of life, one would need to search elsewhere. Basil Pennington is an excellent author, and has written many wonderful inspiring books, but this book lacks going beyond basics and tutorial, it reads like is bit Pre Vatican II and not as revised for the person in the year 2000 searching for a deeper and closer realtionship in the Eucharist.

This book is not splendid. Dom Basil, in his Cistercian humility, has opted to use his own translations of the psalms: a pastiche of the Jerusalem Bible's Yahweh-blighted cadences and the New Revised Standard Version and perhaps other versions, with inaccuracies and cacophonies abounding. As for the prose of Fr Pennington's commentary, it goes to farcical lengths to avoid using a masculine pronoun to refer to the deity. But, no, gentle reader, there is nothing comic about this tome, and the Poetry as Prayer series seems to have fallen from a great height. (The other authors in the series would have doubtless produced a better book, using a familiar if not an immortal version of the Psalter.)

This is a day in which books about King David's songs include Patrick Henry Reardon's scholarly "Christ in the Psalms"; Thomas Merton's "Praying the Psalms" and "Bread in the Wilderness"; C S Lewis's unpedantic "Reflections on the Psalms"; and the vexingly hard-to-find "Runways to God" by the late Paschal Botz, OSB. Explorations in big city Catholic bookstores could turn up books on the Psalms by intellects as devout and luminous as Hubert van Zeller, another Benedictine. For the Daughters of St Paul to propose Dom Basil's book as a feasible addition to the wealth of literature about the Psalms is, to speak kindly, curious.

Granted, there are few books about the Psalms that equal the Psalms themselves, but this newest book in the Poetry as Prayer series is uninspiring, superficial, and gives the impression of having been hastily written.

Written as a part of an informational series for people considering vocations to life in a religious order, this is some of the worst of Basil Pennington's writing. He was vocations director at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts and is a well known writer, so he was an obvious choice to write the book on behalf of the order. However, there is too much factual information woodenly presented and without photographic or other illustration to be engaging. In fact I would think this would discourage vocations. Some basic early documents of the Cistercians are included but can be found elsewhere, including on line at the Scourmont Abbey web site. The volume is also considerably overpriced for the purpose. A better choice to learn a bit about Trappist life is the same author's book _The Monastic Way_ which is engagingly written and amply illustrated.