God Is My Broker : A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth - Hardcover

Buckley, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375500065 ISBN 13: 9780375500060

Publisher: Random House, 1998

Synopsis

When financial advice from God helps a monk save his monastery, he goes from absolute poverty to unimaginable wealth, and must face many new temptations

About this title

Review:

The whole point of a monastic existence is to put aside worldly things. Brother Ty, the narrator of God Is My Broker, has put them aside with a vengeance, and his task is all the more impressive when you consider just how many he used to possess. "I had traded the life of a Wall Street trader," he tells us, "for the contemplative life, my briefcase for a rosary, the roar of the trading floor for Gregorian chant." Hunkered down in a rural monastery, he seems finally to have escaped the iniquities of Mammon, along with rush-hour traffic and a major drinking problem.

A vow of poverty, however, isn't what it used to be. The monastery of Cana is falling to pieces. And Cana Nouveau--the wine the brothers have always produced to sustain themselves--has hit a new, undrinkable low. As the desperate abbot looks to Deepak Chopra and Anthony Robbins for advice, Brother Ty begins to get financial tips from the Supreme Insider: "That day God had revealed Himself to be our broker." Sometimes, of course, the Lord speaks in mysterious ways. Even a stray line from the Song of Solomon may encourage the narrator to take a flier on Apple Computer stock: "Comfort me with apples. It sounded like a 'buy' recommendation to me." By heeding his divine broker at every turn, however, Brother Ty manages to transform the monastery into a financial powerhouse. His story amounts to the funniest bit of ecclesiastical satire since J. F. Powers's Morte D'Urban. What's more, the authors send up the entire self-help industry with hilarious expertise, concluding God Is My Broker with what even Deepak Chopra would recognize as a home truth: "The only way to get rich from get-rich books is to write one."

From the Inside Flap:

With this latest work of fiction, a collaboration with New York Times writer, John Tierney, Christopher Buckley promises to be every bit as hilarious and witty as in his previous audiobook, Thank You For Smoking. In God Is My Broker, Buckley aims his sharp humor at the self-help gurus; and the likes of Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, and Deepak Chopra had better watch out.
Down to their last $304, the abbots in this story make a bunch of money playing the stock market--and then get carried away in today's commercialism and self-help principles when they begin to market their homemade wine. From redecorating their decrepit digs in the "peasant chic" style to outrageous television commercials to a "Cask-cade" water slide and artificial alp behind their monastery, (and passing off "decent Chilean table wine" as their own $16 a bottle brew) these monks will stop at nothing to get to the top of the wine business!
God Is My Broker includes actual excerpts from the writings of Robbins, Chopra, and Covey, and lists hysterical questions about God, money, etc., that followers of the "progam" can ask themselves!

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375500065
• ISBN 13: 9780375500060
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197