Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Note: This is my personal review which might be skewed by my study of Philosophy, Psychology and all of Robert's previous works, as well as my unconscious biases. Therefore, please take it with a grain of salt. I've been waiting for this book for around 5 years and after reading it cover to cover I am largely underwhelmed by its contents, I have many points to voice but I want to be concise so I'll highlight the most important ones in three different bits. The Book. 1) My main issue with this is book is its self-help nature. Unlike previous works which served as a dispassionate look into the dynamics of people, power, seduction, or war; this book feels like the oh so prevalent genre of self-help, telling you how you should live your life to attain "greatness" at every step. For instance, I quote: "You feel the need to be on top of all the details and global trends so you can control things better, but you are drowning in information. It is hard to see the proverbial forest for the trees. This is a sure sign that you have lost a sense of your priorities" 2) It takes such a long time to get to the point and most of the chapters are convoluted, they repeat themselves and tend to be contradictory at times. 3) The selection of stories are less precise in illuminating a point, sometimes it looks more like conjecture rather than an illustration of the "Law" The Message. _ Most of the laws have been either illustrated before or they are plain common sense. For instance, it takes a whole chapter to understand that people tend to be grandiose but that's good if we can channel it. _ The use of scientifically validated knowledge is unsound. For instance Greene is fond of ideas such as "Multiple Intelligences" "Emotional Intelligence" or The "10000 hour rule". These so-called theories rest on slim evidence at best and are downright misleading at worst. _ Greene overlooks much of the current literature in Psychology and prefers to revert back to the ideas of arcane psychologists like Carl Jung or Sigmund Freud (The very people that the term Pseudo-Science was originally used against) *On that note, he has a persistent fixation with topics like "the ego" and Freudian developmental phases in childhood. I tried to shrug it off at first but that’s simply impossible to overlook because the system is such a farcical approach to psychology, or as Psychological Science put it: “There is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.” The Author. 1) With this book Greene seems to depart from his dispassionate nature, which like Machiavelli's was great for truly getting to the core of human interactions. Now he takes a moralistic approach arguing things like empathy and caring for others are the highest expression of human nature. Nothing wrong with being a good person, but as this book purports to be an objective evaluation of the nature of people it should abstain from any judgmental tendencies on it, or at the very least not state these judgements as "Laws". 2) The message is tainted with political undertones, e.g. stating that we live in a disoriented era where "demagogues and tyrants" take advantage of us and our tribal tendencies. (These undertones are made explicitly in the pre-release bonuses which take a very leftist approach, but I want to leave that aside because that's not part of the book itself) I'm an apolitical person so I couldn't care less one way or another, but it's very off-putting to find this kind of rhetoric in supposedly objective books. All in all this is probably a good book for you if: 1) You have zero knowledge of psychology and/or have minimal experience dealing with people. 2) Or You Have a desire for Self-Help advice that can guide your life decisions (if that's your case). Otherwise please save yourself some time (around 20 hours) and pursue some more meaningful sources on the matter.