Reason for Hope
A Spiritual Journey
co-authored with Dr. Jane Goodall
(Warner Books, 1999)

Jane Goodall's destiny has been blessed with faith, resolve and purpose. From a toddler entranced by all living things and a little girl inspired by Tarzan and The Jungle Book, she became the woman who, through a "chance meeting," landed a job with famed paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey, accomplished scientific breakthroughs in Gombe, and ultimately became a champion of the environment.

The journey has not been without its crises: she endured the horrors of the Blitzkrieg and World War II, postwar hardships, vicious rumors and "establishment" assaults on the integrity of her work, a terrorist attack and hostage-taking at Gombe, and her husband's slow, agonizing death. But throughout, her religious convictions, although tested, have helped her survive -- and Jane Goodall's pursuit of science has enhanced, not eroded, her belief in the Divine.

In this book, co-authored with Phillip Berman, she candidly shares her life -- talking of the love and support of her mother, her son, her late husband, of friends and strangers -- as well as the Gombe chimpanzees she introduced to the world nearly forty years ago. And she gives us convincing reasons why we can and must open ourselves to the "saints within our souls."

At one with nature and challenged by the man-made dangers of environmental destruction, inequality, materialism, and genocide, Dr. Goodall offers insight into her perceptions of these threats and celebrates the people who are working for Earth's renewal. Here, indeed, is Reason for Hope.

A PBS special, Jane Goodall: Reason for Hope, underwritten by Tom's of Maine, was inspired by this book.

The Journey Home
What Near-Death Experiences and Mysticism
Teach Us About the Gift of Life
(Pocket Books, 1998)

We have all seen many newspaper articles and best-selling books about the amazing phenomenon of near-death experiences. Hundreds of people are stepping forward to give testimony to the greater reality they have encountered. Those who have had mystical visions, have returned to report that they have seen something beyond the mundane realm of our daily lives. They have traveled beyond our known horizons, seen the face of God, and been transformed. But what do these experiences teach us?

Award-winning author Phillip Berman, a Harvard-educated theologian and himself a survivor of a near-death experience, writes: "What most of us secretly long for suddenly becomes a reality for near-death experiencers: For a brief moment in time, they come to know, not just as an abstract intellectual concept, but as a palpable fact close to their hearts, that they belong to God."

Berman believes that we can derive much more than inspiration from these stories. By looking closely at near-death and mystical experiences and attending to the lessons they contain, we can all share in their majesty and power; they can give our lives new meaning.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with people who have had both near-death and mystical experiences, Berman explores the universal truths these moving stories reveal. As a student of comparative religions, he shows us the similarities that exist in these stories across time and cultures, similarities that allow us to define the enduring themes of these encounters. Berman argues that these experiences are the wellspring of all the world's great religions, and that their message of the oneness of creation and the Divine spark within us all, forms "an eternal theology."

Berman's perspective allows us to see that these remarkable transformative experiences are not vague philosophical or sacred visions--their message has immediate relevance to all our lives. Taking us by the hand, he shows us how to extract that lesson and let it transform our own sense of worth and meaning. He believes that each of us has the capacity, on a daily basis, to expand our spiritual horizons--to perceive the grace in our lives so that we may cultivate the self-love and extreme compassion that mark those who have had these experiences, and to share with them an abiding sense of purpose and a belief in the overwhelming value of love.

The Ageless Spirit
(Ballantine, 1992)

Is aging a fact of life? Or is it the fulfillment of life? Is aging a curse? Or is it a blessing? In her celebrated National Public Radio series "I'm Too Busy to Talk Now," Connie Goldman explored these questions with scores of prominent creative people over seventy. Now, in The Ageless Spirit, Phillip L. Berman, editor of the highly praised The Courage To Grow Old, has worked with Goldman to fashion the best of these interviews into brilliant and inspiring essays. The result is a treasury of humor and profundity, dazzling wit and hard-earned wisdom, by some of the most fascinating and gifted men and women of our times.

The Search for Meaning
Americans Talk About What They Believe and Why
(Ballantine, 1990)

What do Americans, as a people, believe in? What are the experiences that have transformed their lives? How does faith -- in God, in human goodness, in politics, progress, money, or pleasure -- illuminate our actions?

These are the questions that Phillip Berman asked when he set off on a four-year, 35,000 mile odyssey to chronicle America's moral imagination. By the time he was through, he had spoken to some five hundred people from all walks of life. What they told him makes this engrossing and radiantly insightful book the first and only oral history of the religious and philosophical beliefs of contemporary Americans.

Vividly compelling in the extraordinary freshness and variety of its many voices, The Search for Meaning offers a full scale portrait of the moral state of the union.

The Courage of Conviction
Edited with an introduction by by Phillip L. Berman
(Ballantine, 1986)

In an age in which morals seem to take a back seat to expediency, when doing the right thing for its own sake is considered noteworthy, when giving to others as a way of affirming the self is somehow out of date, it is refreshing and inspiring to read the hopes, fears, and accomplishments of these diverse men and women whose lives speak for their beliefs and whose contributions enhance us all.

Including original contributions by:

Joan Baez
Rita Mae Brown
Leo Buscaglia
Norman Cousins
H.H. Dalai Lama
Jane Goodall
Billy Graham
Andrew Greeley
Harold Kushner
Elliot Richardson
Benjamin Spock
Lech Walesa
Irving Wallace
Michael York
...and more.