Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I’m giving this one star for a couple of reasons. 1. The content does not justify the length of the book. When you strip away the pseudo-profundity and verbosity, you’re left with rather simple ideas you could find in any self-help book or discover on your own. Rule # 1, for instance, essentially states that females prefer males with confidence and that success breeds confidence and further success. This is rather obvious without having to understand the evolutionary history of lobsters. 2. The introduction of the book presents the author as an objective investigator of the truth, disillusioned by dogmatic ideology and prepared to demonstrate its dangers. He then proceeds to incessantly quote from the bible, perhaps the most dogmatic text ever written. I didn’t purchase the book to be preached at, and found it unexpected and highly obnoxious. I understand that the author is interested in story and “archetypes,” but the bible is quoted out of proportion. There are many ancient stories to choose from, each with endless interpretive possibilities, but the bible is, for some reason, the primary text. Now I’m sure this is fine with many people, but I was unpleasantly surprised that I had purchased a book on biblical criticism or theology. The stories the author has selected to focus on, his preferred interpretations, and the stories he ignores, says more about his psychology than anything else. It appears that he NEEDS religion to be true to prevent his own nihilistic tendencies, a viewpoint he foists on his readers. More than once he states in no unequivocal terms that Jesus is the “archetypal perfect man.” Perhaps, but without getting into it here, there are many reasons to think perhaps not. For those more philosophically inclined, or for those that appreciate the progress of humanism and science, Socrates, for example, would probably be a better fit for the archetypal perfect man. And if I want insight into morality and human nature from an ancient source, I’d turn to Plato and Aristotle before the Good Book. Again, this is all too subjective, which is the problem in general with using “ancient wisdom” to support a particular viewpoint. The author presents his interpretive schemes as objective truths about human nature and the only display of humility is found in the introduction.