Editor’s note: My friend, Glen Warner, suggested I’d like this book and I did. Since it was written in the 1920’s and the writer’s style is unique, it was a little hard to get into. But its parabolic teaching engaged me by the end. The moral of the story is typical serving something greater than our self but there’s more – the book suggests by doing so we become capable of greater achievements ourselves and that further, if we insist on confidence in our giving then the one to whom we’ve given becomes more likely to pass such “personality” on to others.

Favorite excerpt: “If you should decide to experiment with this projection of yourself through investments in other people, you must be prepared for all manner of failures, disillusionments, disgusts. You will frequently go to no end of trouble and expense for somebody who turns out to be a pest and a piker. You will be imposed upon, lied to, lied about! You will run into cases of ingratitude so rank that it will sicken you! But now and again, you will manage to put the thing over... and when you do you will discover it has squared for all the failures you’ve ever had.”

http://www.amazon.com/Magnificent-Obsession-Lloyd-C-Douglas/dp/0395957745