The Return of the Ragpicker

The sequel to The Greatest Miracle in the World presents the seven principles designed to restore humans and their world to honesty, purity, and joy. 75,000 first printing.

In the first of his bestsellers, The Greatest Miracle in the World (1975), Mandino wrote about the mystic and inspiring figure of Simon Potter the Ragpicker, who rescued drunks and others from life's dumping grounds with the help of a credo he called God's Memorandum. Here he reappears, bringing a new set of principles--basically the Golden Rule plus added strictures against destroying the earth, humanity's only home. Fans of the author's earlier self-help guides will find all they seek here, and will presumably overlook the elaborately melodramatic close and contrived narrative device. Others may balk at Simon's lengthy recitation of Mandino's numerous achievements: million-plus book sales, awards, crowded lectures, guest spots on national TV, etc. All impressive and true, but focused on the author instead of the message.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

More than 15 years have passed since the ``ragpicker'' vanished from Chicago, leaving Mandino a set of principles on how to lead a more fulfilling life--principles that the author chronicled in a deadly earnest parable, The Greatest Miracle in the World. Mandino went on to achieve renown as an apostle of positive thinking in a series of simplistic texts (A Better Way to Live, 1989, etc.). Here, he again encounters the aging savior--who just happens to have a cozy backwoods cabin near Mandino's New Hampshire farmstead. The nonagenarian master and his pupil engage in less-than- Socratic dialogues that effectively allow the author to praise himself to the skies without seeming to blow his own horn. While quizzing the ragpicker on how careful a watch he kept during his physical absence, for example, Mandino is assured that 1983 ``was truly a vintage year for you, Mr. Og. You were awarded the first Napoleon Hill Gold Medal for literary achievement, and you also received the coveted CPAE Award from the National Speakers Association, which is the group's highest award for public speaking. Then in 1984, you became only the fourteenth individual inducted into the International Speakers Hall of Fame....'' When the expressions of mutual admiration finally run their course, it develops that the aged familiar has reappeared to ask Mandino to ``contribute some of [his] great talent'' to making a ``stirring manifesto'' of the old pro's wisdom. Eager to collaborate, the author produces a brief miscellany of prayers under the heading, ``For the Rest of My Life...''--pietistic appeals that request help from a higher power for assistance in observing the golden rule, establishing goals, and otherwise becoming a genuine credit to the human race. Having completed this labor of love, Mandino learns (would you believe from a great blue heron?) that his spiritual mentor has shuffled off this mortal coil. Which, hopefully, means no further returns for a straw man whose sanctimony could give Christian faith, hope, and charity a very bad name. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Mandino has written 14 very successful books about achieving success and happiness. His fans are numerous and loyal. If you did not know this already, his latest work will practically scream it at you. Those who finish this pretentious, book-length resume, fleshed out by a meager plot, will know all about Mandino's many awards, his talented children, and the cassette versions of his books. The simplistic and incidental use of God and religion, and the gross misuse of the Hebrew work Mizpah (Genesis, 31:49) is distressing. The last ten pages are interesting and contain some good advice--for readers who have never read the Bible, taken a class in psychology, or listened to their mothers. These few pages are good, but do not justify the book's purchase.
- Kenneth M. Locke, Sellersville, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.