I might be underwhelmed by this book because I've literally been doing vipassana style meditation for years now so this felt a little like...repetitious to me? Even basic?
But that was the intent of the book, so for its presumed audience (and this is my instructor's fault for assigning a book with the wrong audience), it is a good, very digestible introduction to insight meditation. I particularly like the latter sections, where he discusses meditation and psychotherapy. He, clearly, thinks the two are mutually supportive--one is not a replacement for the other. And I know some people have argued about other books on the topic of forgiveness of difficult or abusive parents or relationships--he deals with that here. He also has, though buried, some nice concise thoughts. Like: in his comments on jealousy: "If we condemn ourself for being jealous, we simply strengthen a feeling of not being good enough. We become even more tied up in the painful, fiery knot, and we find it very difficult to cut ourselves free" That is a great deal to sit with--that self judgement reinforces the ego self, and suffering.
He also discusses the idea of self in East and West--in the West, we tend to conflate self with ego--what Cherie Huber would call the 'conditioned mind'--the jumpy monkey that wants and craves and needs most desperately to prove that it exists. The self, your self, is the self observer self. To survive in the world, we need a self--we do need some form of ego, but we need to be aware of the boundaries of ego--when are we letting the conditioned mind run the show? That is a nice bridge, I think, that's not often discussed in these texts.