“It’s ingrained in human nature to look at ourselves with a weary awareness of all that’s wrong within, and the optimism that someone, somewhere can tell us how to fix it. As Jessica Lamb-Shapiro points out in her ambitious if unfulfilling new memoir-cum-odyssey, Promise Land, we’ve been gobbling up self-help advice for nearly as long as the written word has existed, devouring it in the ancient Egyptian Sebayt writings and the Book of Proverbs. But our contemporary mania for the wisdom of Dr. Phil is different from what generations past gleaned from Epictetus or even Dale Carnegie, and Lamb-Shapiro aims to explain how. Along the way, she’s on a quest to fix herself. Lamb-Shapiro, who has written for The Believer and McSweeney’s, is a witty and enjoyably self-aware writer. She’s certainly a far more entertaining guide through hellish terrain — like a preshow interrogation by a ‘Dr. Oz’ producer — than Dante was given.” [. . .] –Mary Elizabeth Williams, The New York Times, January 3, 2014
“Dante’s Self-Help Book”
“There are monuments to Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) everywhere in Italy, where three years of study in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ are required for young people to learn how to lead the best possible life. One cannot imagine Italy’s culture without Dante’s 14th-century work — any more than one could imagine Britain’s without Shakespeare or America’s without the Declaration of Independence.
Unlike most other world classics, The Divine Comedy is a self-help book. People read Shakespeare with no expectation that they will become Shakespeare. But many read Dante expecting to mimic his results and transform themselves from seekers, lost in their own questions, into poets, certain and transcendent.” [. . .] –Harriet Rubin, Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2007
Contributed by Jake Bourdeau
Schaub and Schaub, “Dante’s Path: A Practical Approach to Achieving Inner Wisdom” (2004)
“Dante’s Path: A Practical Approach to Achieving Inner Wisdom is primarily a self-help book. However, it is a self-help book with a difference. Authors Bonney Gulino Schaub and Richard Schaub use their perceptive, though simple reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy to guide their readers through a process that allows them to access their internal wisdom, or ‘wisdom mind,’ to achieve liberation from their fears and to realize their deeper potential.” [. . .] —Amazon
See also Dante’s Path: Vulnerability and the Spiritual Journey (2014) and Il potere di Dante: Un cammino di illuminazione per una vita piena e felice (2021), by the same authors.
Daniel Dorman, “Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness” (2004)
“Catherine, nineteen years old and suffering from severe schizophrenia, sat in a mental hospital—mute, catatonic, and hearing voices. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Dorman, was convinced that his patient’s psychotic behavior was not merely rooted in chemical imbalances but rather in the dramatic circumstances of her family history. He was therefore determined to avoid the mind-numbing medications that had been so detrimental to Catherine’s well being. Dorman fought adamant opposition and criticism from his peers and superiors for a chance to guide Catherine out of madness. Dante’s Cure is the riveting true story of a woman’s triumph over her schizophrenia without medication, written by the psychiatrist who helped her.” —Amazon
