GOLDBERG, Philip 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born December 5, 1944, in New York, NY; son of Aaron (a businessman) and Ann (Manes) Goldberg. Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.B.A., 1966; graduate study at Northeastern University, 1967-68; Maharishi International University, M.A., 1974. Politics: "Uncommitted." Religion: "I like them all."

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—32 28th Ave., Venice, CA 90291. Agent—(Literary) Molly Friedrich, Aaron Priest Agency, 344 East 51st St., New York, NY 10022; (film and television) Diane Cairns, Sy Fischer Agency, 10960 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024.

CAREER:

Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, Boston, MA, social worker with the mentally retarded, 1968-70; lecturer in transcendental meditation and related subjects for Foundation for the Science of Creative Intelligence, 1971-74; Maharishi International University, Fairfield, IA, instructor in interdisciplinary studies and director of curriculum, 1974-76; writer and consultant, 1976—.

WRITINGS:

The TM Program: The Way to Fulfillment, Holt (New York, NY), 1976.

(With Daniel Kaufman) Natural Sleep: How to Get Your Share, Rodale Press (Emmaus, PA), 1978, revised edition published as Everybody's Guide to Natural Sleep: A Drug-Free Approach to Overcoming Insomnia and Other Sleep Disorders, Jeremy P. Tarcher (New York, NY), 1990.

Executive Health: How to Manage Health Danger Signals and Manage Stress Successfully, McGraw (New York, NY), 1978.

(With Richard Rubin) The Small Business Guide to Borrowing Money, McGraw (New York, NY), 1979.

(With Christopher Hegarty) How to Manage Your Boss, Rawson, Wade (New York, NY), 1980.

(With Mitchell Posner) The Strategic Metals Investment Handbook, Holt (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Ron Melanson) The Financial Strategist, Ramifications, 1983.

The Intuitive Edge: Understanding and Developing Intuition, illustrated by Thom Dower, J. P. Tarcher (Los Angeles, CA), 1983.

The Babinski Reflex: And 70 Other Useful and Amusing Metaphors from Science, Psychology, Business, Sports, and Everyday Life, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1990.

This Is Next Year (novel), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Oscar Janiger) A Different Kind of Healing: Doctors Speak Candidly about Their Successes with Alternative Medicine, Putnam (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Mark Goulston) Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, Berkley (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Felice Dunas) Passion Play: Ancient Secrets for a Lifetime of Health and Happiness through Sensational Sex, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(With the editors of Prevention magazine) Over 1,000 Quick & Easy Pain Remedies from Little Ouches to Big Aches, Rodale Press (Emmaus, PA), 1997.

(With Rafer Johnson) The Best that I Can Be: An Autobiography, introduction by Tom Brokaw, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Harold Bloomfield) Making Peace with Your Past: The Six Essential Steps to Enjoying a Great Future, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Mark Goulston) The Six Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again—and Stay There, Putnam (New York, NY), 2001.

Roadsigns: Navigating Your Path to Spiritual Happiness, Rodale Press (Emmaus, PA), 2003.

(With Harold Bloomfield) Making Peace with God: A Practical Guide, Jeremy P. Tarcher (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of a screenplay for Columbia Pictures.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

The Zenning of America, a book about the influence of Eastern cultures on contemporary American society; The Promise, a novel; The Authorized Biography of Gregory Getz, a novel; several screenplays and teleplays.

SIDELIGHTS:

Philip Goldberg, a former social worker and teacher of transcendental meditation, has made a career of writing—often with coauthors who are experts in the field—self-help books on psychology, health, and spirituality. He is also the author of a novel, This Is Next Year, and helped decathlon athlete Rafer Johnson write his autobiography.

Interested in alternative medicines and spiritual health, Goldberg has teamed up with such experts as psychiatrist Oscar Janiger and psycho-spiritual educator Harold Bloomfield to write such books as A Different Kind of Healing: Doctors Speak Candidly about Their Successes with Alternative Medicine and Making Peace with Your Past: The Six Essential Steps to Enjoying a Great Future. In the former, written with Janiger, the authors surveyed 250 doctors who resort, at least sometimes, to alternative medicines when treating patients. Practices such as biofeedback, acupuncture, and herbal medicines are discussed, but the conclusions, pointed out a Publishers Weekly reviewer, are admittedly "more impressionistic than scientific." Nevertheless, Janiger and Bloomfield provide some "provocative ideas" in their book, according to the reviewer. With Bloomfield's Making Peace with Your Past, Goldberg helps convey his coauthor's assertion that, as one Publishers Weekly contributor put it, "finding inner peace gives one the mooring and strength to explore issues of shame, regret, grief, love and sex." The two authors followed this book up with Making Peace with God: A Practical Guide. This volume covers some of the same themes as the earlier book, but with a more spiritual focus.

Goldberg has more recently written a solo work on spiritual happiness titled Roadsigns: Navigating Your Path to Spiritual Happiness, in which he explains that there are no quick fixes to assuring spiritual contentment. Instead, one must trek a long road of self-analysis and compromise, and Goldberg advises readers to practice reflection and to be open-minded enough to explore what various religions have to offer. "While the book might have been more focused," a Publishers Weekly writer commented, "readers interested in spiritual searches will find it appealing."

Another interest of Goldberg's, sports, provides the theme for several of his other books. In The Best that I Can Be: An Autobiography by Rafer Johnson, Goldberg helped Johnson tell his story about his rise from humble beginnings to winning the Olympic gold medal in the 1960 decathlon event in Rome. After Johnson's success in Rome, he went on to become a broadcaster, to establish the California Special Olympics, with the help of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and to work for other charitable organizations. The Best that I Can Be was dubbed a "thought-provoking and inspiring read" by Library Journal writer Larry Little; and Wes Lukowsky, who was pleased by the lack of "scandals" and "bitterness" in the book, called Johnson's autobiography "just good reading" in a Booklist assessment. In New York Times Book Review, David Davis described the book as occasionally dry, but able nevertheless to capture the "very basic and very old-fashioned appeal" of track in the 1960s.

Goldberg's novel, This Is Next Year, also focuses on sports. Set in Brooklyn in 1955, the year the Dodger's won the World Series, the book tells the story of an eleven-year-old boy, Roger Stone, who dreams of becoming a Dodger. A family tale, the novel also relates the aspirations and frustrations of Roger's parents: a father who missed out on being a professional ball player and a mother who is campaigning against Senator McCarthy's Communist witch hunt. Much nostalgia for a time when rock 'n' roll was young and radio still dominated the media also imbues this book. Although a Publishers Weekly critic noted that the author makes a few factual errors, the reviewer concluded that Goldberg "captures the joys and terrors of childhood in the period with wit, charm and intelligence."

Goldberg once told CA: "I have been a word freak all my life, have read anything I could any time I could since my parents taught me to read at age three. My only vocational interest aside from wanting to change the world has always been writing, and I'm tickled to be able to do it full time. My early nonfiction books took advantage of information and expertise acquired while pursuing various interests prior to beginning a writing career. I later took on several collaborations at the behest of coauthors who were experts in certain areas but not writers. While less satisfying than work springing from my own mind or heart, these afforded the opportunity to continue earning a living while adding to my credits as an author and learning new things. [ The Intuitive Edge ] grew from a long-standing interest in the question: 'How do we know what we know?' It enabled me to explore exciting areas of science, art and philosophy while engaging in my own speculation.

"More recently, I have begun to explore personal experience and my talent for storytelling, areas that were unsatisfied in my nonfiction work.… The contents of my nonfiction work has been influenced by trends in modern science and thought (particularly in the areas of consciousness) as well as by ancient writings, principally those of the Orient. My style and approach to storytelling have been influenced by every artist from Chaucer to Updike, from Chaplin to Truffaut.

"I would like to see literature and film become less devoted to titillation and sensationalism and more responsible to the esthetic, intellectual, and emotional needs of the public. Too often we underestimate the public's intelligence and disregard our responsibilities as molders of attitudes and ideas.

"If I had any advice to give to aspiring writers it would be: there is no such thing as writer's block, only times not to write and ideas or feelings not yet ready to manifest."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1998, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Best that I Can Be: An Autobiography, p. 1826.

Library Journal, September 20, 1980, Susan A. Singer, review of The Small Business Guide to Borrowing Money, p. 1855; March 1, 1981, Susan S. DiMattia, review of The Small Business Guide to Borrowing Money, p. 534; July, 1988, Larry Little, review of The Best that I Can Be, p. 99; May 1, 1990, Mark L. Shelton, review of The Babinski Reflex: And 70 Other Useful and Amusing Metaphors from Science, Psychology, Business, Sports, and Everyday Life, p. 88; September 1, 1990, Evelyn L. Mott, review of Everybody's Guide to Natural Sleep: A Drug-Free Approach to Overcoming Insomnia and Other Sleep Disorders, p. 248; June 1, 2000, Susan E. Burdick, review of Making Peace with Your Past: The Six Essential Steps toEnjoying a Great Future, p. 168; March 15, 2002, Steve Young, review of Making Peace with God: A Practical Guide, p. 85.

New Realities, June, 1981, review of How to Manage Your Boss, p. 43.

New York Times Book Review, August 30, 1998, David Davis, "Hurdles," p. 23.

Publishers Weekly, January 27, 1992, review of This Is Next Year, p. 93; March 29, 1993, review of A Different Kind of Healing: Doctors Speak Candidly about Their Successes with Alternative Medicine, p. 53; June 29, 1998, review of The Best that I Can Be, p. 44; June 5, 2000, review of Making Peace with Your Past, p. 81; January 15, 2001, review of The Six Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again—and Stay There, p. 63; March 17, 2003, review of Roadsigns: Navigating Your Path to Spiritual Happiness, p. 66.

School Library Journal, October, 1990, review of The Babinski Reflex, p. 156.*