Amazon.com "Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective," writes Robert Greene. Mastery of one's emotions and the arts of deception and indirection are, he goes on to assert, essential. The 48 laws outlined in this book "have a simple premise: certain actions always increase one's power ... while others decrease it and even ruin us."
The laws cull their principles from many great schemers--and scheming instructors--throughout history, from Sun-Tzu to Talleyrand, from Casanova to con man Yellow Kid Weil. They are straightforward in their amoral simplicity: "Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit," or "Discover each man's thumbscrew." Each chapter provides examples of the consequences of observance or transgression of the law, along with "keys to power," potential "reversals" (where the converse of the law might also be useful), and a single paragraph cleverly laid out to suggest an image (such as the aforementioned thumbscrew); the margins are filled with illustrative quotations. Practitioners of one-upmanship have been given a new, comprehensive training manual, as up-to-date as it is timeless. --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince, espousing principles such as, everyone wants more power; emotions, including love, are detrimental; deceit and manipulation are life's paramount tools. Anyone striving for psychological health will be put off at the start, but the authors counter, saying "honesty is indeed a power strategy," and "genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power." Amoral or immoral, this compendium aims to guide those who embrace power as a ruthless game, and will entertain the rest. Elffers's layout (he is identified as the co-conceiver and designer in the press release) is stylish, with short epigrams set in red at the margins. Each law, with such allusive titles as "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," "Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit," "Conceal Your Intentions," is demonstrated in four ways?using it correctly, failing to use it, key aspects of the law and when not to use it. Illustrations are drawn from the courts of modern and ancient Europe, Africa and Asia, and devious strategies culled from well-known personae: Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Catherine the Great, Mao, Kissinger, Haile Selassie, Lola Montes and various con artists of our century. These historical escapades make enjoyable reading, yet by the book's conclusion, some protagonists have appeared too many times and seem drained. Although gentler souls will find this book frightening, those whose moral compass is oriented solely to power will have a perfect vade mecum. BOMC and Money Book Club alternates. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
This book is well-written and very nicely designed. Beyond that, it's hard to see what the fuss is about.
First of all, and on the one hand, the book isn't the torrent of Machiavellian amorality you may have been led to believe. The author does go out of his way to make it _sound_ as though he's presenting you with sophisticated, in-the-know, just-between-us-hardheaded-realists amoral guidance. But as a matter of fact almost every bit of this advice _could_ have been presented without offense to the most traditional of morality.
(For example, the law about letting other people do the work while you take the credit is made to sound worse than it really is. Sure, it admits of a "low" interpretation. But it's also, read slightly differently, a pretty apt description of what any good manager does.)
Second, and on the other hand, the advice isn't _that_ good; it's merely well-presented. How it works will depend on who follows it; as the old Chinese proverb has it, when the wrong person does the right thing, it's the wrong thing.
And that's why I have to deduct some stars from the book. For it seems to be designed to appeal precisely to the "wrong people."
Despite some sound advice, this book is aimed not at those who (like Socrates) share the power of reason with the gods, but at those who (like Ulysses) share it with the foxes. It seeks not to make you reasonable but to make you canny and cunning. And as a result, even when it advises you to do things that really do work out best for all concerned, it promotes an unhealthy sense that your best interests are at odds with nearly everyone else's. (And that the only reason for being helpful to other people is that it will advance your own cloak-and-dagger "career.")
No matter how helpful some of the advice may be, it's hard to get around the book's rather pompous conceit that the reader is learning the perennial secrets of crafty courtiers everywhere. Even if only by its tone, this volume will tend to turn the reader into a lean and hungry Cassius rather than a confident and competent Caesar.
In general the book does have some useful things to say about power and how to acquire and wield it. Unfortunately its approach will probably render the advice useless to the people who need it most. Readers who come to it for guidance will come away from it pretentiously self-absorbed if not downright narcissistic; the readers who can see through its Machiavellian posturing and recognize it for what it is will be the very readers who didn't need it in the first place.
Recommended only to readers who _aren't_ unhealthily fascinated by Sun-Tzu, Balthasar Gracian, and Michael Korda.
I have to agree with the Kirkus reviewer -- the "laws" in this book contradict each other. In addition to the "Be conspicuous / Blend in" paradox, there are at least these others:
(1) Be absent to increase your power / Don't isolate yourself from others, or you'll lose power
(2) Crush your enemies totally / Win your enemies over with love
There are probably others, but those are the ones I recall off the top of my head.
It is no defense for the author to say that well, sometimes one rule works, and sometimes another does. That's not what being a "law" is all about. We don't hear scientists say, "Well, in this case the law of gravity is not called for -- instead, we're going to use the law of floating in midair." Laws are laws. They can't have random, undefined "exceptions" at unpredictable times. The author doesn't even try to formulate rules for when certain of the power "laws" are called for, and when their opposites would work (the "reversal" sections notwithstanding), he just rattles off all 48 one after the other. But then, I guess a book called "The 48 Tactics of Power That Might or Might Not Work When You Try Them" wouldn't sell well.
Despite this shortcoming, the anecdotes in the book are often quite engaging, although a little more variety is called for. The same cast of characters crops up again and again: Yellow Kid Weil, Count Victor Lustig, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Barnum, and Kissenger must have been the most powerful folks in history based on how often they are mentioned here. It would've been nice to hear from more contemporary power players -- Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, for instance.
Indeed, these laws do work and are dark (well, some are in the gray zone). I subtracted a star because the book omits the few ways of gaining power that not only does not involve manipulating, deceiving, and lying, but also helps others.
Anyway, anyone who wants to do anything that involves interdependence on others (about 99% of people) should read this book...if only to create a defense against those that follow the Dark path to power.
Tired of getting walked over by colleagues? 48 laws of power is not the type of book that you pick up and read cover to cover, but a resource that you can use from time to time. If office politics is getting you down, 48 laws of power is a great book to assist you in formulating strategies to be slightly more machiavellian. Just temper the advice when you put it into practice!
This tone of this book is self-congratulatory, the writing is dense, and the overall book seems to be written for those powerless people full of resentment who sit in corners and hatch useless plots and fantasies. As a student of political philosophy, I picked up this book because it was supposed to be a modern masterpiece of the 'realpolitik' school of thought. What I found was a book at turns blustering, snide, full of braggadocio, and generally atrocious and useless. The author baldy, and badly, rips off classical authors like Machiavelli and Hobbes. This would be fine if he were actually creating something of modern value and relevance. But he isnt. This is a manual for mental masturbation by all those disatissfied puppies who wish revenge upon others around them but can never enact a thing. Save your money, and your time, and educate your mind: buy a copy of Machiavelli's timeless classic 'The Prince' and read in less than a hundred pages of tight, terse, pointed, classically poetic prose what it takes this author several hundred pages to foul up and make disatrously obscure.
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Not bad, but not all that good either, September 4, 2001
Interesting and Informative!, April 30, 2005
This is not a book for the real world, April 26, 2005