Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Nice stories but no real answers to the question he poses
I was disappointed in this book. I felt it was a bait and switch. Some of the stories were interesting to read, but at the end of book, I was thinking "So what?" Po Bronson is a good writer, and he interviews a lot of different kinds of people, but his insights are quite limited, and colored by his limited perspective. I agree with one of the other reviewers- I found The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth am I Here For? to have a lot more meat to it. Bronson's book was entirely predictable.
Rating:  - Stuck in a rut?
I agree with most of the preceeding reviews -- if you feel stuck in a rut, you should try this book. I found it to be a good tool for stirring up creative ideas, and for encouraging what the psychologist Maslow advocated -- making the 'growth choice' rather than the 'fear choice' in your life.
Rating: - what a load of CLAPTRAP
Po Bronson used to write books about over-educated white people in Silicon Valley. Now - the ultimate question has been answered by more over-educated multi-degreed white people on what they should do with their lives. That a book like this even gets published blows my mind except the obviously self-indulged have an urge to read about the other 2 percent of people in the world just like them. The stories are so snore-inducing I could barely keep my eyes from jumping and skimming paragraphs ahead to locate something of interest. How many times did my head hit the pages? I started to wonder if the "kinder, gentler Po Bronson" with his soft-spoken voice and new age-y happy talk might have intended the book as a subliminal Deepak Chopra-esque meditation vehicle of some sort. Your eyes are getting heavy, you find yourself drifting off.... At the end I wouldn't have given you a plug nickel for anyone in the book and some of them were more repugnant than others in their whiny-ness and cluelessness. Like the one who went to medical school and decided to drop out after two months because she "didn't like sick people" like what the hell, hadn't she ever BEEN to a Doctor before? Didn't she KNOW that's what they do? The book is filled with the stories of people who live within a 300 mile radius of San Francisco. Just about everyone is from the area from LA to Seattle with only a few out of this main drag as filler (or to make the book seem more serious). I used to live in this area. Insufferable individuals, who are overly impressed with themselves like the ones in this book, are why I don't live there any longer. Most impressed with himself is the author, Po Bronson, who liberally infuses the book with cutaways into his own miraculous existence. Although he takes the blame for ruining his first marriage by cheating on his wife, he also calls her a West Coast Feminist and contrasts that with his new wife, who apparently stays much more in her place and defers to Po and let's him feel all big and strong and manly. In fact there are several thinly veiled insults to his former wife (who does not have a name) which are supremely tacky since she was with him for 12 years and pretty much encouraged and fostered his entire writing career. Way to go, Po! And perhaps a warning - look for the wolf in sheep's clothing wife number two. Not to mention that after somewhat accidentally ending up a father, Po goes on to slam his former ideals about not wanting children. Then he slams all people who choose NOT to breed as doing it out of FEAR. He thinks it takes courage to procreate and raise children. He says, it's not that big a deal, really. Well, NOT IF YOU ARE A MAN. What world does this guy live in? He crows about HONESTY yet I see little in this book. This is like those supposed "reality" TV shows where you go to a lush island and try to "survive" knowing there is a crew chuckwagon and medical staff standing two feet from the camera in case you stub your toe. This is a book for the RATIONALIZATION GENERATION. The same kids he wrote about in Silicon Valley who need to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves that it's ok they lost a billion dollars. This is a book for the privelaged who need validation. Or as Bronson calls them "people with more choices" than "the working class". Right. You mean the people who actually WORK and don't cry in Starbucks about what LOSERS they are. The people profiled in this book didn't take any REAL risks. In fact, most of them didn't do anything but change jobs here and there or think about changing a job or consider switching enterprises within their same field. There are only a scant few who chuck it all to weave baskets (in this case sell trees, farm catfish, become a long-haul trucker) and truthfully they are the only stories that have a modicum of impact. The rest are the kind of people you would move away from quickly at a cocktail party. And Bronson himself is the one you'd want to beat feet from the fastest. He truly needs to GET OVER HIMSELF. Maybe that should be his next book, "What should I do to GET OVER MYSELF."
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