The 48 Laws of Power

By Robert Greene

Book Overview

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control - from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. This is the only authorized paperback edition in the US.

In the book that People magazine proclaimed "beguiling" and "fascinating," Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), others teach the value of confidence ("Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness"), and many recommend absolute self-preservation ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally"). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140280197
• ISBN13: 9780140280197
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

it's not all that

not all that if you from the hood most of this won't work on them ....you either him or you not yo aura/energy how you carry yo self tells a lot more

Best read in a long time.

This was introduced to me by a friend and since the first interaction that we had I took initiative to check this out. The 48 Laws of Power brought me back into reading. I love this genuinely!

A book that will change the way you look at the world.

A book worth reading and rereading. Best to learn the lessons so they aren't used back against you. After reading this book you'll start noticing some of the laws being followed and broken in all different aspects of life, society, and politics.

THE 48 LAWS OF POWER: YOUR THINKING WILL NEVER REMAIN THE SAME

Read this book and your thinking will never remain the same. Drawing upon historic examples that portray man's journey through the ages as one long, unending quest to dominate his fellows, The 48 Laws of Power reads somewhat like a much expanded version of Machiavelli's The prince. Yet it carries a lot of its own originality - on many levels. One interesting, innovative feature of this book can be found in the numerous illustrations and anecdotes appearing along the page margins that the writer uses to buttress his points. Quite educative, they provided me an easy opportunity to browse through and be acquainted with fascinating classic literature from Aesop's Fables down to Sun Tzu's The Art of war. Can we refer to the 48 Laws as success literature? Some of Robert Greene's advice seems innocent enough: Never outshine the master; win through your actions, never through argument; concentrate your forces; enter action with boldness. These are tips you would find in any self-help book that should put anyone on a stronger footing in the workplace with their boss, with colleagues, or even within the curious context of a romantic relationship. But there is a darker, more sinister side to the 48 Laws, a side that appears to be responsible for all the notoriety that surrounds this book. There are laws which, seeming to controvert themselves in some instances, advocate underhandedness and the practice of outright evil in the pursuit of one's ambitions. Reading The 48 Laws awakens a moral conflict within us and presents two philosophies that attend the attainment of power - one inspired by goodness and the other governed by guile. But I think it all depends on the kind of success you seek. To those that would stoop to guile I would point out that Robert Greene has neglected to include what perhaps might have been the first law: All that goes around comes around; you reap what you sow. On the other hand, some of these laws that appear to advocate evil - taken in the right context, they shed their malicious intent and turn out to be very helpful, well-meaning principles. For instance, I agree with the thought `So much depends on your reputation - guard it with you life'. But I think my reputation rests, more than anything, on my character and commitment to whatever I do, and it is along these lines I will seek to guard it. Also, when I think of `Make other people come to you - use bait if necessary', I tend to see it in the light of the principle that pronounces: The kind of person you are, to a large extent, determines the kind of people you will attract into your life. So I go about developing my `bait' - myself - in the best way I can. Fishing, as opposed to hunting, one success writer calls it. An anecdote which fascinated me and which I kept returning to was one about Cosimo de Medici, the 15th Century Florentine banking magnate, who rode a mule instead of a horse and decidedly deferred to city officials, but effectively controlled government policy