48 Laws of Power is one of the worst books I’ve ever had the displeasure to read. Written by a pseudo-historian who thinks he’s a latter-day Machiavelli, when in fact he has no idea what he’s talking about. Greene only manages to pull from a very limited amount of historical examples (usually Louis XIV, Napoleon, or P.T. Barnum for some reason) which he completely misunderstands and oversimplifies to fit his narrative. For example, he claims Byzantine Emperor Michael III was usurped purely because he trusted Basil, which is a gross oversimplification indicating he had no idea about historical context. Furthermore his chapter titles, which he seems to view as profound pronouncements of divine truths, are unbearably cringeworthy and most are hardly applicable outside the medieval royal court. If that wasn’t bad enough, at the end of each chapter, he instantly dismisses the point he just made. While balance is important, it’s not like he differentiates between where to go right and wrong and how to avoid the ‘reversal’; instead he simply states “This rule is good, but this rule is also bad”, thereby making the entire chapter pointless. If you want some genuinely good work which isn’t written by an amateur, read the classics like Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.
48 Laws of Power is one of the worst books I’ve ever had the displeasure to read. Written by a pseudo-historian who thinks he’s a latter-day Machiavelli, when in fact he has no idea what he’s talking about. Greene only manages to pull from a very limited amount of historical examples (usually Louis XIV, Napoleon, or P.T. Barnum for some reason) which he completely misunderstands and oversimplifies to fit his narrative. For example, he claims Byzantine Emperor Michael III was usurped purely because he trusted Basil, which is a gross oversimplification indicating he had no idea about historical context.
Furthermore his chapter titles, which he seems to view as profound pronouncements of divine truths, are unbearably cringeworthy and most are hardly applicable outside the medieval royal court. If that wasn’t bad enough, at the end of each chapter, he instantly dismisses the point he just made. While balance is important, it’s not like he differentiates between where to go right and wrong and how to avoid the ‘reversal’; instead he simply states “This rule is good, but this rule is also bad”, thereby making the entire chapter pointless.
If you want some genuinely good work which isn’t written by an amateur, read the classics like Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.