What to read after From Poverty to Power?

James Allen, author of "From Poverty to Power, strove to live the ideal life described by Russia s great novelist and mystic Count Leo Tolstoy - the life of voluntary poverty, manual labor and ascetic self-discipline. Like Tolstoy, Allen sought to improve himself, be happy, and master all of the virtues. His search for felicity for man on earth was typically Tolstoyan. His day in Ilfracombe began with a predawn walk up to the Cairn, a stony spot on the hillside overlooking his home and the sea. He would remain there for an hour in meditation. Then he would return to the house and spend the morning writing. The afternoons were devoted to gardening, a pastime he enjoyed. His evenings were spent in conversation with those who were interested in his work. Allen insists upon the power of the individual to form his own character and to create his own happiness. Thought and character are one, he says, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within him that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development. Allen's message is one of hope even in the midst of confusion. Yes, he says, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him. The works of James Allen are eminently practical. He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing, or to add another to the existing books. According to his wife, Allen wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.