WISDOM NUGGETS is a collection of over one thousand quotations from some of the most famous and accomplished people in history and up to the present day. Author Jeff R. McGowan’s approach dictates the tenor, and so is worth recounting. For almost two decades, McGowan kept a number of “Spirit Books” as he called them: notebooks in which he jotted down quotations as he came across them. McGowan recognizes the random nature of the collection that resulted, making useful comparisons with his endeavor and that of the commonplace book of historical times.

McGowan does offer a hedge, however, stating that the “wisdom nuggets” of the book’s title is misleading. Quotes are drawn from an extremely wide range of cultures, religions, philosophical and political persuasions, and so forth, in the spirit of what McGowan calls the Zen Buddhist concept of the “beginner’s mind:” “[To] understand the whole, one must understand all angles, good and bad, authentic and manipulative.”

This is all well and good as far as it goes, but if it is so, why call the collection by that name? This is important, because the book’s name does seem to suggest that within its pages readers will find, well, nuggets of wisdom. And sure enough, many such nuggets do turn up: McGowan draws on a kaleidoscopic range of sources, from Aristotle and Shakespeare to Sartre and Stephen Covey. But McGowan’s insistence on the “beginner’s mind” leads him down some questionable paths. A section titled “Politics/Ideologies of Control” lays bare the contradictions inherent in the title. Rubbing shoulders with sage pieces of advice by thinkers such as Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Thoreau, and Thomas Paine are a couple of quotes by Adolf Hitler, one of which concerns the massacring of Indian politicians as advice for dealing with Gandhi. One intuits the intention here; McGowan wishes to show what the “might is right” mindset looks like alongside more enlightened political perspectives. McGowan plainly has no truck with tyranny. But I submit that a quote by Hitler of that sort has no place in a book titled WISDOM NUGGETS, and no amount of wrestling with the “beginner’s mind” will convince very many readers otherwise. Little thought was given to this.

There are other missteps. McGowan repeats quotes in various sections because they seem relevant in more than one domain, which is tiresome for the reader, who keeps coming across aphorisms they have already read. Also, there are a few misattributions: as far as is known, Gandhi never actually said “Can you be the change in the world that you wish to see?” and Abraham Maslow is called Abraham Maslov at one point. There is much to like here, but WISDOM NUGGETS’ faults do weigh somewhat in the balance.

Jeff R. McGowan’s WISDOM NUGGETS contains useful and thought-provoking material from some of history’s greatest luminaries, but its origins as something resembling a modern-day commonplace book result in peculiar features.

~ Craig Jones for IndieReader