Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money -- That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Author: Robert T Kiyosaki
Argues that a good education and secure job are not guarantees of financial success, and presents advice for accumulating wealth.
USA Today
A startling point for anyone lookng to gain control of their financial future.
Library Journal
Reissuing a self-published best seller.
New interesting book: New Hope for People with Diabetes or Tibetan AyurVeda
The 48 Laws of Power
Author: Robert Green
Cunning, instructive, and amoral, this controversial bestseller distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. Law 1: Never Outshine the Master. Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions. Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit. Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally. Law 33: Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew.
These are the laws of power in their unvarnished essence—the philosophies of Machiavelli (The Prince), Sun-tzu (The Art of War), Carl von Clausewitz, Talleyrand, the great seducer Casanova, con man Yellow Kid Weil, and other legendary thinkers and schemers. They teach prudence, stealth, mastery of one's emotions, the art of deception, and the total absence of mercy. Like it or not, all have practical applications in real life.
Each law is illustrated with examples of observance or transgression drawn from history and featuring such famous figures as Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, Mao, Alfred Hitchcock, P.T. Barnum, Haile Selassie, Catherine the Great, and Socrates. Convincing, practical, sometimes shocking, this book will fascinate anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.
Hardy Green
The 48 Laws of Power seems to have been packaged more than published. . . . The moral advice adds up to a grim portrait of a ruthless, duplicitous universe. -- Business Week
Newsweek
This season's most talked about all-purpose personal strategy guide and philosophical compendium.
Publishers Weekly
Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's The 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' 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 elusive 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.
Library Journal
Uses examples from history to deliver 48 laws for the power-hungry, e.g., Law 1: "Never outshine the master." Designed by Elffers, a noted book packager.
Library Journal
Uses examples from history to deliver 48 laws for the power-hungry, e.g., Law 1: "Never outshine the master." Designed by Elffers, a noted book packager.
Newsweek
This season's most talked about all-purpose personal strategy guide and philosophical compendium.
Kirkus Reviews
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world's greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: "Conceal Your Intentions," "Always Say Less Than Necessary," "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it's used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict one another. We are told, for instance, to "be conspicuous at all costs," then told to "behave like others." More seriously, Greene never really defines "power," and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn't. To ask why this is so would be a farmore useful project. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it's a brilliant satire.
Table of Contents:
| Preface | ||
| Law 1 | Never Outshine the Master | 1 |
| Law 2 | Never Put too much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies | 8 |
| Law 3 | Conceal your Intentions | 16 |
| Law 4 | Always say Less than Necessary | 31 |
| Law 5 | So much Depends on Reputation - Guard it with your Life | 37 |
| Law 6 | Court Attention at all Cost | 44 |
| Law 7 | Get others to do the Work for you, but always Take the Credit | 56 |
| Law 8 | Make other People Come to you - use Bait if Necessary | 62 |
| Law 9 | Win Through your Actions, Never through Argument | 69 |
| Law 10 | Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky | 76 |
| Law 11 | Learn to Keep People Dependent on you | 82 |
| Law 12 | Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim | 89 |
| Law 13 | When Asking for Help, Appeal to People's Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude | 95 |
| Law 14 | Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy | 101 |
| Law 15 | Crush your Enemy Totally | 107 |
| Law 16 | Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor | 115 |
| Law 17 | Keep others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability | 123 |
| Law 18 | Do not Build Fortresses to Protect yourself - Isolation is Dangerous | 130 |
| Law 19 | Know who you're Dealing with - do not Offend the Wrong Person | 137 |
| Law 20 | Do not Commit to Anyone | 145 |
| Law 21 | Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker - Seem Dumber than your Mark | 156 |
| Law 22 | Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power | 163 |
| Law 23 | Concentrate your Forces | 171 |
| Law 24 | Play the Perfect Courtier | 178 |
| Law 25 | Re-Create yourself | 191 |
| Law 26 | Keep your Hands Clean | 200 |
| Law 27 | Play on People's need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following | 215 |
| Law 28 | Enter Action with Boldness | 227 |
| Law 29 | Plan All the Way to the end | 236 |
| Law 30 | Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless | 245 |
| Law 31 | Control the Options: Get others to Play with the Cards you Deal | 254 |
| Law 32 | Play to People's Fantasies | 263 |
| Law 33 | Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew | 271 |
| Law 34 | Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act Like a King to be Treated Like One | 282 |
| Law 35 | Master the Art of Timing | 291 |
| Law 36 | Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the Best Revenge | 300 |
| Law 37 | Create Compelling Spectacles | 309 |
| Law 38 | Think as you Like but Behave Like others | 317 |
| Law 39 | Stir up Waters to Catch Fish | 325 |
| Law 40 | Despise the Free Lunch | 333 |
| Law 41 | Avoid Stepping into a Great Man's Shoes | 347 |
| Law 42 | Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter | 358 |
| Law 43 | Work on the Hearts and Minds of others | 367 |
| Law 44 | Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect | 376 |
| Law 45 | Preach the need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once | 392 |
| Law 46 | Never Appear too Perfect | 400 |
| Law 47 | Do not Go Past the Mark you Aimed for; in Victory, Learn when to Stop | 410 |
| Law 48 | Assume Formlessness | 419 |
| Selected Bibliography | 431 | |
| Index | 433 |
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