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I finished the book this weekend. Wow!

Tom Baugh can be at once incredibly perceptive, and annoyingly ascerbic, but I found I could easily excuse the latter in order to gain the insight from the former. Once you get what he’s trying to do, you start to appreciate that he’s not pulling punches, nor worried about offending your sensibilities, and all of it helps to prove a couple of points along the way. If it gets in the way for you, think of him as the Dr. House of philosophy.

With his man/monkey analogy, he is able to illustrate many of the problems in our country as we hurtle down the ever steeper slope away from our founding principles. Some of these problems are obvious and well-discussed here on FR. Others are problems that you knew existed, gnawing at the back of your mind, but couldn’t quite identify. Tom makes these clear as well. Even though I agreed with much of Tom’s philosophy going in, I found many of my preconceptions challenged, and I have changed my mind on several positions I formerly held, and I don’t do that easily. You may come to think that his man/monkey construct is less an analogy, and more a semantic slight of hand to get you to think outside your cage. Or not.

I’ll not give away the ending, such as it is, which in true Baugh fashion, is presented with “some assembly required”, or better, “some of your own thought required”. All I will say is that, even if you don’t agree with most of what he says, and yet still ignore his warnings and make it through, you can’t find much fault with the bulk of his recommendations for self-improvement. Those alone are worth the read.

The print is a bit tiny for older eyes, making the book look shorter than it is until you start into it. There are many referenced works which the author expects you to read or have read - some of which are necessary to fully understand the following sections of the book. These are all on the website if you want to pre-read any of them.

This thread is also on the site as a reference.

I found this book to be life changing. Having spent most of my life shovelling bananas at monkeys, I came to some of the same conclusions, and made some progress in the direction Tom suggests. He took me the rest of the way in comprehension and illuminated a good part of the path ahead for me. Knowing in advance, I’d have paid many times more for his book than he charged, and how often can you say that?