Gary Lachman and Gary Valentine (guitarist with Blondie and Iggy Pop + author) are one and the same person.
There is nothing wrong with this, but worth to know.

Lachman has taken over the role to bring P.D. Ouspensky back into respect as some are in need to discredit Ouspensky without knowing him personally nor having really worked in his groups (NOT the FOF alias Burton Society). Well, the orig. Ouspensky groups stopped existing really after his death, so there was no chance, but gossip-needy as some are (W.P.Patterson), there is no need for a book written by somebody who doesn't have a clue what the 4th.way work is all about.

So if Gary Valentine alias Lachman writes a book like this, he will NOT bring back respect to somebody who served the 4.th way to his possible best, i.e. deserves respect, but the opposite is achieved:

Lachman's book is so full of nonsense, halfbaked truth's and often deliberate lies, that it would be better he wrote a book about Robert Burton, who might quite well be behind Lachman.

Gary Lachman's book is essentially predicated upon what we already knew about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky from primary and secondary sources. However, the book's very special character stems from the author's brilliant synthesis of all that material. One might criticize the book for its dependence on secondary sources. But such criticism badly misses the mark.

In my judgment, the real value of Mr. Lachman's work is that it humanizes the so-called "Fourth Way," something that has, heretofore, never been attempted, let alone achieved. The book is a lucid and fascinating demythologization of both an erstwhile practical "philosophy," and the concealed personalities behind it. It provides a badly needed hermeneutic by which one can decipher the manner in which the sly man behind the curtain plied his hypnogogic craft. The man I have in mind, of course, is Gurdjieff.

Lachman is absolutely correct to suggest that Ouspensky denied his better self, and neglected his own (in my estimation, more important) work, to pursue the idiosyncratic and synthetic occultism of Gurdjieff. Lachman gives us a masterly depiction of the process of decline of Ouspensky the man, as well as his metaphysical thought world. It is truly tragedy on an epic scale, and Lachman adeptly chronicles the monumental pathos without disfiguring the human beings involved in the drama.

Besides all the obvious merits of Lachman's book, allow me to touch on one that has been thus far neglected in any reviews of which I am aware. In fact, allow me to go so far as to suggest that it is the chief merit of this important book. That is, Gary Lachman opens a way for Fourth Way devotees to gain some objective insight into their precarious existential situation. He reveals the people and personalities behind the dogma and ritualism of the Fourth Way worldview. He exposes the true and concrete dimensions of the "work," not in any theoretical or purely historical manner, but as it actually was and is for the people bound to the "system." He lays bare the roots of Fourth Way "philosophy" in the person and personality of one man, G. I. Gurdjieff, and displays the catastrophic and appalling outcome of the imposition of one man's will upon that of another.

In my own meetings with remarkable wo/men over the years, I have never met a more remarkably rigid, mechanical, and unimaginative lot as those who are devotees of Beelzebub, the sly Monsieur Gurdjieff. They are blindly caught in the neurotic-obsessive drive to actualize a superhuman, godlike Self. Their uncomprehending devotion to the religion of spiritual self-idolatry surpasses anything with which I have come into contact. This penetrating and sadly amusing irony escapes no one except his very obedient and unthinking disciples. Now there is an "escape manual" for them to consult. I cannot, of course, say that this was one of the intentions of the author in writing his book. My guess is that it must have at least been in the back of his mind. In any event, we owe Mr. Lachman a debt of gratitude for a very fine and interesting book, and furthermore, one with the potential to do great good.

-- Michael J. Langlais, Ph.D.