Product Description

During his junior year at the University of California, while training to become a world-champion gymnast, Dan Millman stumbled on a 94-year-old mentor nicknamed Socrates, a powerful, unpredictable, and elusive character. He taught a way to maximize performance using a unique blend of Eastern philosophy and Western fitness to cultivate the true essence of a champion - the "way of the peaceful warrior." Millman's first-person account of his odyssey into realms of light, darkness, mind, body, and spirit has since become an international bestseller about the universal quest for happiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160084 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-26
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .90" h x 6.20" w x 9.10" l, 1.05 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Amazon
During his junior year at the University of California, Dan Millman first stumbled upon his mentor (nicknamed Socrates) at an all-night gas station. At the time, Millman hoped to become a world-champion gymnast. "To survive the lessons ahead, you're going to need far more energy than ever before," Socrates warned him that night. "You must cleanse your body of tension, free your mind of stagnant knowledge, and open your heart to the energy of true emotion." From there, the unpredictable Socrates proceeded to teach Millman the "way of the peaceful warrior." At first Socrates shattered every preconceived notion that Millman had about academics, athletics, and achievement. But eventually Millman stopped resisting the lessons, and began to try on a whole new ideology--one that valued being conscious over being smart, and strength in spirit over strength in body. Although the character of the cigarette-smoking Socrates seems like a fictional, modern-day Merlin, Millman asserts that he is based on an actual person. Certain male readers especially appreciate the coming-of-age theme, the haunting love story with the elusive woman Joy, and the challenging of Western beliefs about masculine power and success. --Gail Hudson

From AudioFile
Yet another first-person spiritual odyssey, this one from a gymnast whose shaman is an old grease monkey. That so many gurus in this kind of literature live humbly reminds one of the old New Yorker cartoon in which the society matron asks her capitalist husband, "If you're so rich, how come you're not smart?" To this observer, Millman is a bit young, his life too charmed to speak authoritatively about enlightenment and cosmic wisdom, but millions of avid readers disagree. However one takes his professions of sagacity, as narrator as well as author, he has ample skill and showmanship, though one gets the impression that one has heard it all before. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine