I read this book perhaps five years ago and I thought it was fantastic. It told of Bradman's early days, his rise through grade cricket and the sheffield shield and onto cricket for Australia. Follows him for the next 20 years as he came to dominate world cricket and become Australia's greatest son. Inspirational.

I really enjoyed this book because it put all of my history lessons on the Depression and the fifties through the sixties into better perspective. By following the life of Ivory Perry, a man who lived through these times, I was better able to understand the struggle that certain groups of people went through in their search for equality and fair treatment. I think this book is a wonderful teaching tool for anyone who has a difficult time with typical history books. It enables the reader to both enjoy history, and learn from it.

Perry's book was the first to attempt to analyze Gurdjieff and his mission from the point of view of opposition, without quite the same degree of ridiculous gossip and fabrication found in Pauwell's "Gurdjieff" or as a blatant a personal or commercial agenda found in the later attack by Idries Shah entitled "Teachers of Gurdjieff" (supposedly by Lefort). Perry does fall back on some of the discredited falsehoods about Gurdjieff's early life, but these are not the main thrust of the book.

Perry is highly biased from a particular premise derived from his place in the "traditionalists" movement, that includes other critics of Gurdjieff such as Rene Guenon. Based upon those methodological premises, this seems to be a fair critique. But anyone deeply familiar with Gurdjieff's own methodology will realize that the points Perry makes are not relevant outside Perry's own restricted paradigm-- or at least not within the paradigm Gurdjieff sets forth.

Ultimately, Perry's arguments center on points of belief. He claims that Gurdjieff puts forth that God is not omnipotent, therefore -- ipso facto -- Gurdjieff must be disqualified.

The only reason I put forth that this book is not totally worthless is that it is one of very few that almost skirts the line between the dozen or so ridiculous National Enquirer- level anti-Gurdjieff books, and the hundreds that basically treat Gurdjieff's teachings as sacred scripture. Gurdjieff admonished his students to believe nothing unless personally confirmed. So this book may help raise some questions toward that confirmation.