A Guide for the Perplexed

The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living.

Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead.

A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.

An inspired critique of modern materialistic values and a road map for achieving one's true, higher potential from "one of the wisest minds of our time."*

"This is what my life has been leading to," said the maverick economist E. F. Schumacher upon completing A Guide for the Perplexed, his summation of a lifetime of wisdom. The author of the classic Small Is Beautiful, the "eco bible" (Time) named one of the Times Literary Supplement's 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II, Schumacher charts the failings of "materialistic scientism," the system of thought that dominates the developed world and which Schumacher charges with narrowing the horizons of human experience. Instead, he seeks to offer a new, far more expansive "map for living" that liberates our goals beyond the constraints of logic and inspires in us the faith to choose a life of higher significance. "Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns," he writes, "but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us something much better: that we can become oak trees."