Too often, titles that purport to lead readers along the path to enlightenment or to unlock the enigma of lasting happiness are an embarrassing muddle. They offer no thesis, no plan of action, no concrete details. One can imagine the reader finishing such a book and thinking, “So now what do I do?” RECLAIMING THE SACRED by Jeff Golden is not such a book. His subtitle, “Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World,” sounds woo-woo, yet it has a lot of depth. For instance, anti-materialism is a thread throughout, but Golden doesn’t just rant about money or power or elites. He makes concrete arguments about the dangers of excessive wealth. From there, he moves to discussions of concepts that build on wealth, such as the scourge of scarcity and its antidote, love, which of course leads to happiness.

Books like this are often bereft of citations, which leaves the reader to wonder where the author got their information. Golden doesn’t make this mistake, concluding his book with thirty-nine pages of endnotes. Of course, the notes are impossible to read, being single-spaced and in an infinitesimal font, which leaves the reader to wonder where he got his information. And despite this endnoting propensity, many statements that should be cited are not, such as this one: “Research shows that one of the major reasons money is so important to so many of us, despite doing so little to actually benefit us, is that we use it to try to make up for a lack of some of the things that really do matter.” What research? Golden doesn’t say. Still, it is refreshing to read a book about the search for happiness that relies more on policy arguments than transcendentalism. There are magical moments (poetry is sprinkled throughout, some of it seemingly original), but they don’t detract from Golden’s arguments–rather, they show his range as a writer. His varied background–professor at Vassar College, director of nonprofit organizations–is an added bonus, giving him different experiential threads on which to tug. Bottom line: many books promise to change a person’s life. This one actually might.

Well-researched and relatable, Jeff Golden’s RECLAIMING THE SACRED is a book that seeks to uncover the key to happiness–and in the end may actually do so.

~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader