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Available Reviews

Sy Ginsburg: "Gurdjieff Unveiled"

With Gurdjieff Unveiled, Seymour Ginsburg has provided an exceptionally useful text, fulfilling his commitment to the third line of work (work for the Work) and facilitating the first line of work (on oneself) for all his readers. The text is organized in six chapters (perhaps mirroring Beelzebub’s six descents to Earth), and includes four appendices. Gurdjieff Unveiled is based on Ginsburg’s earlier work, written with Nicholas Tereshchenko, and is designed as a modern introduction to the Gurdjieff work. According to Ginsburg, the book is directed toward “good householders,” those who have accepted the responsibilities that life has brought to them, but who crave a connection to a deeper stratum of meaning than is ordinarily available in day-to-day life.

Review of Gurdjieff Unveiled by Kenneth W. James Ph. D Read whole review

Paul Beekman Taylor: "Gurdjieff's America"

Paul Beekman Taylor's Gurdjieff's America gives us an overview of Gurdjieff the man and his general ideas much better than does James Moore's Gurdjieff, although it is in the same category of perception as Moore, rather than in the category of those who try to see from inside the Work and plunge intimately into method like Ravi Ravindra's Heart Without Measure, or the champion of them all, Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous. Taylor's option, or necessity, is to stay general and not plunge into the nuts and bolts of the Work as anybody who has thoroughly lived it would or could. "

Review of Gurdjieff's America from Simson R. Najovits Read whole review

Discovering America!

The most important message of ‘Gurdjieff’s America’ is to the American ‘gurdjieffians’ themselves; their history is told with great authority. Paul Taylor goes in his ‘American galoshes’ all the way from promised land to hell in this world.

Review of Gurdjieff's America from Reijo Oksanen Read whole review

"Paul Taylor's book offers new evidence that the more we learn about the events surrounding Gurdjieff's mission, the deeper the question becomes..."

Jacob Needleman, The American Soul

"I loved reading Gurdjieff’s America and have learned a great deal from it as will, no doubt, all pupils of Gurdjieff’s teaching, along with scholars and students of the history of the times. This book is destined to be regarded as the definitive account of Gurdjieff’s sojourns in America."

Sy Ginsburg Read whole review

John Shirley: "Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas"

"In my view, the single most unsatisfactory point in this book is its imprudence. Take, for example, the speculation about the young Gurdjieff's possible "experimenting" with "more errant women" in Tiflis, and the anecdote from De Val. These are pointless and prurient. How do we know what Gurdjieff did in Tiflis? If, as Shirley seems to imply, an active sex life into old age is proof that one is "a conductor for powerful energies", then Gurdjieff was but one of countless elderly men."

Joseph Azize Read whole review