Great airplane reading on the way to that private island and sure to occasion a few adjustments in one’s portfolio.
Robbins owns his own island. Why don’t you?
It’s just a “small island paradise,” mind you, but it doesn’t hurt that Robbins has amassed a considerable chunk of change by building a life-coaching empire. Of course, there’s a certain obnoxiousness attendant in telling an audience that you’re rich, but the promise that the audience can be rich too has its own charms. Robbins seldom ceases to be rah-rah in his belief that if readers just suspend disbelief and follows “the 7 Simple Steps in this book”—the proprietary caps are his—then the big win can’t be far behind. Obnoxiousness aside, the author is no slouch; for this book, he’s interviewed and studied the portfolios of numerous billionaires (ordinary millionaires need not apply) to find out the secrets of their success, many of which fall into his own simple-step septet. It would steal Robbins’ thunder to reveal them, but one bit of general counsel that makes good sense is offered by JP Morgan Chase investment whiz Mary Callahan Erdoes: “You can never be out of balance in taking care of yourself as a person, taking care of your work as a professional, taking care of your family, taking care of your friends, your mind, your body.” On the matter of balance, Robbins offers a seemingly counterintuitive dis-recommendation of the old balanced-portfolio mantra, which, he holds, can put the holder at unnecessary risk; that provocative advice alone is worth the cover price. Of course, the rules vary from billionaire to billionaire; they call to mind Somerset Maugham’s witticism, “There are only three rules for writing a novel. The trouble is, no one knows what they are.” Still, Robbins’ common-sensical, relentlessly positive, often highly specific advice is both useful and inspirational—which is just as advertised.
Great airplane reading on the way to that private island and sure to occasion a few adjustments in one’s portfolio.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5780-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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