The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene has 36,881 four or five star reviews on Amazon.com as I write this in February 2022. I don’t think I have every seen a book with as many positive reviews as this book.
I know from my own research and reading over the last few years that it is highly regarded and recommended by many individuals whose opinion I would value.
But I don’t like this book. I think it is way too long, repetitive and over reliant on tenuous links between the historical anecdotes and the law of power the anecdote is supposed to prove.
I am listening to the book on audiobook and am near the end. I cannot wait for it to be over, quite frankly. I rarely quit on a book entirely, on the basis that if I do I may miss out on the one thing that would have made it worthwhile.
So, I invariably plough ahead to the finish. And that is what I am doing with this one. But had I known at the start what I know now I would never have bought the book or commenced listening.
This book could deliver its fundamental thesis in far less time, and it would be just as effective in trying to deliver its hypothesis about the 48 laws of power. A book that is 50% or 33.3% the size of this one would have sufficed.
Anyway, I am not a fan. You might like it and join the other 36,000 reviewers who gave it four or five stars. If you want to check it out take a look here.