The Traveler's GiftSeven Decisions that Determine Personal Success

Andy Andrews          Thomas Nelson, 2002.

 2.0 /5.0

In The Traveler's Gift Andy Andrews tries to combine a Christian self-help book with a fantastical journey through history. The protagonist is a down-on-his-luck guy that experiences short visits with some of history's great leaders, Anne Frank and an angel. His message is that equipped with seven secrets of success from history anyone can take charge of their life and turn around their fortunes.

To his credit, Andrews really sticks it to whiners and quitters in this book. Every memorable person (or being) that the reader encounters basically has a different take on a motivational poster you have seen before at a mall kiosk. Their philosophies on life are boiled down into seven mantras that the hero incorporates into his life and we the readers are creatively promised that we will benefit from following his example. I see the benefit of learning lessons from history, but I think there are better ways then memorizing the convenient lesson appendix from The Traveler's Gift.

I don't usually enjoy the self-help genre but I had enough interest in Andrew's book to continue reading. I haven't really ever seen a book that combined fictitious history with motivational lessons. The only thing it reminded of was a paper I wrote in college where Thomas More and Nicolas Machiavelli spoke to George W. Bush in a dream. I got an A- on the paper but the conversations were pretty silly. They don't come across much better in Gift. Except for instances where the author used well-known quotes, I could never picture any of the seven people that were visited actually saying the dialogue they were given
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A more objective conundrum are the inconsistent maxims on which the story is centered. Each of the first six sages preach a kind of “we are the makers of our own destiny”sermon. The seventh reveals that God is ready to give us whatever we aspire to as long as we persevere. In the denouement we learn that our fate is completely in God's hands and that nothing can happen to us until we accomplish that for which we were put on earth. I'm sure this mixture of the American Dream and folk-religion contributes to it's mass-market appeal,(My paperback version has the Good Morning America seal of approval on it) but I don't the watered-down theology will capture any imaginations a la C.S. Lewis.

The Traveler's Gift is not remarkable. If you do run across it, enjoy the history refresher course for an afternoon and let it remind you that circumstances aren't everything. Then, donate it to Goodwill so they can get 75 cents out of it.