A direct approach and friendly tone go a long way toward making Samuels’ guide a quick, entertaining read.
Learning to apply the law of attraction to achieve success is simply a matter of properly educating oneself, argues Samuels (Just Ask the Universe, 2011) in this personably written self-help guide.
Formal education, Samuels argues, doesn’t offer the tools needed to properly define and achieve success. Using the law of attraction—the idea that focusing on the positive will bring about positive experiences, and vice versa for negative thoughts—as the basis for his approach, he delineates several tools and techniques useful in defining what success really means on a personal level and steps to take to reach those goals. Visualization, focused lists, putting an end to gossip and other negative thought patterns, forgiveness—each of these and more are incorporated into Samuels’ four-year plan, framed much like the traditional college experience. Numerous quotes and references to pop-culture figures highlight the various concepts, giving the book a more contemporary feel than many self-help guides. However, despite this contemporary feel and Samuels’ warm authorial voice, some readers may be less inclined to accept the book’s assertions, as many of them rely on similar concepts found in Robert Collier’s The Secret of the Ages, whom Samuels cites. Skeptics of such New Age ideas may also find some of Samuels’ metaphors—particularly his portrayal of karma in terms of wireless networking—excessively simplistic and reductive. More relevantly, while the book sets out to promote spirituality, the majority of Samuels’ arguments and definitions of success revolve around material success, often exemplified by famous actors and singers, although renowned scientists and businessmen are also referenced. The slight emphasis on materialism may further distance readers disenchanted with the money-driven world. However, despite a few tonal missteps, readers who accept the law of attraction as a valid principle will find much to enjoy, particularly with Samuels’ breezy, straightforward writing style.
A direct approach and friendly tone go a long way toward making Samuels’ guide a quick, entertaining read.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480124400
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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