Summary of The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Summary & Analysis

For those who believe in total integrity, you are likely going to shake your head in disbelief as you read this book. You will definitely want to read this 31 page Instaread summary first before considering the 452 page original by Robert Greene! The original is a self help book on how to gain and maintain power. "They must practice selective honesty, misdirection and an excess of secrecy to gain a tactical advantage." The list of all the Important People goes back to the 1500s!11 Key Takeways are presented in this Instaread summary. Here are a couple to whet your appetite:>>>#1 - "In order to cultivate relationships that increase their power, people seeking power should force others to come to them, never allow others to become independent of them, avoid anyone who frequently encounters misfortune, never place too much trust in any one person, and never outperform their superiors.">>>#8 - "Strategies that benefit the powerful include mirroring the opponent's actions, attacking the one point that holds the opponent's forces together, remaining calm while stirring up anger, finding and exploiting weaknesses, and planning all the way to the end of the campaign.""Misfortune is contagious, so cultivate relationships only with the successful." Author's style is described as authoritative and scholarly with advice delivered in "Absolutes with few specific hypotheticals or instructions for the reader". The audience for this book is unclear and there are no personal examples.Instaread, get rid of the ADS for the Instaread App! How annoying to see it come up not once but TWICE in the middle of the Kindle version! Two stars knocked off for this needless advertising! Once at the end is more than enough!Summary provided in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Liz

Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is a self-help book that offers advice on how to gain and maintain power. Based on Instaread’s Summary of the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, however, the book sounds more like a how-to book for a confidence artist than a book that anyone with a sense of integrity and morals should want to follow. Greene uses parables and examples of historical figures to illustrate his points, but his advice to be selectively honest, use misdirection, and maintain an excess of secrecy hardly seem the traits one would want in a leader, or even a colleague. In an age when scandals and corruption taint politics and society, this isn’t a book I would recommend to my students, other than as a ‘how-not-to’ guide. Thanks to Instaread for an comprehensive summary that lets an unwary reader know what’s inside a book before buying.

With so few minutes in the day, who has time to read whole books? I sure don't, but with these book summaries, it gives me a chance to get a quick synopsis of the book, hitting the highlights. Regarding this book, The 48 Laws of Power, you get an insight into how those in power have made their way to the top. Its disturbing to learn of the underhanded and selfish ways past leaders have worked their way to power, but does it really surprise me? Unfortunately, not really. It actually helps you clear the dirt off your glasses to take a better look at your current leaders (at work, locally, politically, etc) to see if they employ some of these strategies. I, for one, know genuine leaders that don't need to use people, but also know some who got there in other, not so honest ways as described in the text.About the summary itself, it does an effective job of hitting the highlights of the book, but it could have done a slightly better job at fully discussing the key takeaways. Some of the analysis was a little thin. Overall, it was quick way to learn about the book though. I received the summary for my honest review.

Still reading

Great book

This is an overview of the actual book “The 48 Laws of Power.“ Kind of like an abbreviated Cliff's Notes for the full book. It provides a potential reader enough information regarding this book’s content to determine if we want to invest the extra money and time to actually buy and read the entire book. There have been many "self-help" books written over the last century. Most of them deal with positive and morally acceptable personal behaviors. A fair portion of this book goes negative. While the points that are made seem to be genuinely common human reactions they do not ascribe to the best side societal activity. Reading through this summary will give you a better understanding.

They said it was a good book

This is a small book at a small price and you can read it in 30 minutes but I give it 10/10 for powerful knowledge. Yes, there's not a lot of pages but if you could see mine, you would see that nearly everything has been highlighted. This is a very useful book, don't hesitate, just buy it, it's dirt cheap..

Wasn't what I expected

Don't buy this book. This is just a short summary. Hardly worth the money.

I read the whole book of Greene, it is not possible packing this quality in a short summary.

Beautifully crafted. Reason what you read with yourself and it all makes complete sense.