*I received this book as a giveaway on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

The book jacket reads: "With humor and grace, Sherblom elucidates the six principles: Resilience, Surrender, Gratitude, Generosity, Mystery, and Awakening." I will have to agree that Sherblom does masterfully touch on each point, one for each decade he has lived. At his core, he has done what few successful millionaires have, transcended from poverty, to richness and now to spirituality. He has lived the reifecta of human experiences, and this self-help novel attempts to guide others who may have found themselves on a same path. I have seen the negative comments about his point-of-view of religion, but at some point we as humans will have to rise above that, and see a spade for a spade.

Though this book is titled "Spiritual Audacity," I felt it was more about audacity than spirituality. As promised in the blurb, Dr. Sherbom uses his own life experiences as examples of how the six guiding spiritual principles have played out in his life, and the reader gets a lively narrative of the ups and downs of his career (along with a rather lengthy exposition of the beginnings of the biotech industry). Woven into this narrative, Sherbom reflects on his spiritual journey, though it often sounds a bit stretched, or only has become clear in retrospect now that those job experiences are past. I never got the feeling that his spirituality was actually the source of his audacity, which is what I assumed (my mistake!) from the title; instead it seems his audacity was his spirituality. By the end of the book, I wished he had included a section on a seventh guiding spiritual principle: humility.
Sherbom's drawing on a variety of religious/philosophical traditions to deepen his own spirituality is informative and inspiring, and, I think, a wonderful nod to the necessity of inter-religious discourse. At times, though, the writing seemed to become a repetitive mishmash of concepts from those different traditions. Ultimately, his referring to his spiritual journey as a pathless path seemed very accurate - because I would be hard-pressed to identify him as an adherent of any particular faith based on what he has written here. Maybe that's his point - that spirituality is an individual experience and anything that brings you closer to feeling at one with the universe is a good thing. As a Catholic Christian myself, I don't accept that premise as the basis for spiritual maturity or salvation, which is why I was disappointed with the book's emphasis on 'human flourishing' as the goal of spirituality.

I believe this book should have been titled "The Baby-Boomer Guide to Spirituality". Dr. Sherbom is an excellent writer, and his autobiographical portions of the text are very engaging. His religious portions of the text almost made me chuckle. Though he ran from his father's teachings (as many baby-boomers do) really just came full circle. He found the same truths of his father's pulpit but had to travel thousands of miles and read numerous other religious texts.

Dr. Sherbom seems to be more happy with these truths because he found them somewhere other than his father's pulpit. I do find it a little insulting that Dr. Sherbom appears to belittle rule upbringing as something substandard. He also appears to claim some level of expertise of Christian theology. His credentials for orthodox Christian theology are quite lacking. I will give him that he has trained well in other religions and mysticism, but he has little education noted for orthodox Christianity. From the autobiographical portion of the text, I believe this is due to his negative view of his father and thus what his father held to. If Dr. Sherbom had taken time for a study of orthodox Christianity I cold respect his thoughts more.

But, again I think this book is more of a Baby-Boomer guide. Dr. Sherbom appears to be a character from the 1980's TV show "Thirty Something' in this book. I believe there is a good book in this text if it was edited down to the amazing career that Dr. Sherbom has had in business.