Rating: 
Summary: A must read for all who deal with humans
Review: I Thou is truly one of the books that changed the way people think. I Thou is a book that has changed the world, and that is not an exaggeration. Buber's influence on counseling and psycho therapy is undenieable. Carl Rogers revised his thinking after his encounter with Buber and I Thou. I Thou teaches fundamental truths about interaction, interpersonal relationships, and true dialog. Martin Buber will long stand as the seminal work for dialog and interpersonal interactions. But, don't take my word for it, read the book.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for all who deal with humans
Review: I Thou is truly one of the books that changed the way people think. I Thou is a book that has changed the world, and that is not an exaggeration. Buber's influence on counseling and psycho therapy is undenieable. Carl Rogers revised his thinking after his encounter with Buber and I Thou. I Thou teaches fundamental truths about interaction, interpersonal relationships, and true dialog. Martin Buber will long stand as the seminal work for dialog and interpersonal interactions. But, don't take my word for it, read the book.
Rating:
Summary: Rare beauty and touching spiritual insight
Review: In 1988 my life was completely transformed by this tiny book, and those effects continue today. Buber's powerful stance on human (and divine) relations is even more relevant and poignant today as we spend more and more time in enclosed rooms trying to communicate with strangers through machines. Buber understood human isolation so well and so eloquently mourned its harmful effects, proposing a far better way to live and relate to others.I hope that readers will take the time to digest what Buber has to say. As for which transation to read, I began with the Kaufmann, but soon found the older one by Ronald Gregor Smith to be more direct, less wordy, and much more beautifullly written. However, regardless of which translation you read, this book is truly a gem.
Rating:
Summary: An alternative reading
Review: Martin Buber has achieved something amazing in this slim book. All you really need to read is Part One of I and Thou (more appropriately translated as 'I and You' in my opinion) to understand his very practical philosophy. There is more profundity in those 30 pages than in all the religious / "metaphysical studies" / spirituality aisle books you'll ever see. For some reason, Buber is always shelved under Judaica, when Philosophy seems like a better place for him, but anyway don't be scared off by the religious categorization. This book is as secular as they come, and therefore safe for the avowed atheists out there. Anyway, after reading enormous doses of literature, and a pretty good smattering of Western philosophy, this was the first book to have simple, applicable advice; it is at one and the same time a metaphysical system and a doctrine of how to live the good life. As far as I know, these two branches of philosophy usually seem pretty far apart, except in religion, in which case you are forced to accept absurdities as the price of this marriage. Buber is neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He's an existentialist but I find him more 'useful' than other Ex's because his theory is not just a laying bare of hypocrisy -- Buber actually gives you a way of taking positive action to enrich your life. Lest you misunderstand this convoluted review, there is nothing Anthony Robbins-ish about Buber. He's not a rah-rah go team life coach lightweight. Just read it.
Rating:
Summary: Spirituality Palatable to Even the Crankiest of Aetheists
Review: Martin Buber has achieved something amazing in this slim book. All you really need to read is Part One of I and Thou (more appropriately translated as 'I and You' in my opinion) to understand his very practical philosophy. There is more profundity in those 30 pages than in all the religious / "metaphysical studies" / spirituality aisle books you'll ever see. For some reason, Buber is always shelved under Judaica, when Philosophy seems like a better place for him, but anyway don't be scared off by the religious categorization. This book is as secular as they come, and therefore safe for the avowed atheists out there. Anyway, after reading enormous doses of literature, and a pretty good smattering of Western philosophy, this was the first book to have simple, applicable advice; it is at one and the same time a metaphysical system and a doctrine of how to live the good life. As far as I know, these two branches of philosophy usually seem pretty far apart, except in religion, in which case you are forced to accept absurdities as the price of this marriage. Buber is neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He's an existentialist but I find him more 'useful' than other Ex's because his theory is not just a laying bare of hypocrisy -- Buber actually gives you a way of taking positive action to enrich your life. Lest you misunderstand this convoluted review, there is nothing Anthony Robbins-ish about Buber. He's not a rah-rah go team life coach lightweight. Just read it.
Rating:
Summary: Deep insight from profound intellect and enormous caring.
Review: Martin Buber offers a deeply integrative philisophical perspective only paralleled in Taoism, and this book explains in increditle detail the nature and implication of what arguably is the true meaning of the revelations left by every known enlightened being. In developing as an individual in the Western world, there is no substitute for reading and fully grasping this book. It is a map for the territory of life, nuanced and incredibly subtle; deeply human, warm and loving, but never easy. Read this book and be forever changed.
Rating:
Summary: It's pure music
Review: Not only the book content is revolutionary, but the form. This book is a magnificent exemple of how Buber, through words, transcended them. He managed to put us face-to-face with universal pulsations of life and love. And you dont have to be an "intelectual" to be transformed by this living book, but the opposite. Just read Buber. Or better: listen to him and talk to him. It's pure music ( a message to the reader from Cambridge, MA : Mozart also wrote "too many notes...").
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of gems among the roughage
Review: Often obtuse, with lengthy sentences and footnotes about the original German phrases. Still, as I stumble along, there are gems of poetry, for example "When a man loves a woman so that her life is present in his own, the You of her eyes allows him to gaze into a ray of the eternal You. " This book offers fundamental ideas about relationships, of I-It, and I-Thou. We reach a new level of awareness when we choose to approach the other as a Thou - as a relational being and not as an It. We don't find this by seeking an object, but by grace. This book is also about true dialogue (for example, Hendrix - Getting the Love You Want). Buber is worth the effort!
Rating:
Summary: One of the century's greatest
Review: Surely I AND THOU ranks among the twentieth century's ten most important books. The extent to which human relationships form
consciousness and selfhood, and how this relates to "God," will be one of the lasting discoveries of the era, and Buber was this work's chief architect. It is dense material, but there are many mysteriously lovely passages: the part about looking into the eyes of a cat, as if almost able to induce human consciousness, is unforgettable. In a one-star Amazon review, it complains in somewhat Nietzschean terms (and credit Buber with being one of the earliest scholars to be sufficiently challenged by Nietzsche's insights) that Buber denies "the infinite perfectibility of Man." But consider how effortlessly Buber's text "reads" such a formulation: there is an implicit "I-it" relationship between the speaker and this "Man" whose perfectibility we hope to objectively assess. On the other hand, we are invited to enjoy an "I-you" relationship with the speaker, as subjects judging Man the object. Now, either the "I-you" relationship we *really* have in mind--without facing our tacit religiosity in the matter--is with God the unobjectifiable, or what we call the "perfecting" process is as imperfect as Man: it is, in the cold light of day, nothing more nor less than whatever action accommodates the objectifiers, however randomly these arbiters of perfection are chosen.
Rating:
Summary: One of the century's greatest
Review: Surely I AND THOU ranks among the twentieth century's ten most important books. The extent to which human relationships form
consciousness and selfhood, and how this relates to "God," will be one of the lasting discoveries of the era, and Buber was this work's chief architect. It is dense material, but there are many mysteriously lovely passages: the part about looking into the eyes of a cat, as if almost able to induce human consciousness, is unforgettable. In a one-star Amazon review, it complains in somewhat Nietzschean terms (and credit Buber with being one of the earliest scholars to be sufficiently challenged by Nietzsche's insights) that Buber denies "the infinite perfectibility of Man." But consider how effortlessly Buber's text "reads" such a formulation: there is an implicit "I-it" relationship between the speaker and this "Man" whose perfectibility we hope to objectively assess. On the other hand, we are invited to enjoy an "I-you" relationship with the speaker, as subjects judging Man the object. Now, either the "I-you" relationship we *really* have in mind--without facing our tacit religiosity in the matter--is with God the unobjectifiable, or what we call the "perfecting" process is as imperfect as Man: it is, in the cold light of day, nothing more nor less than whatever action accommodates the objectifiers, however randomly these arbiters of perfection are chosen.
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