Rating: 
Summary: A spurious book
Review: You can, I believe, use absolutely anyone's biography to "illustrate" absolutely anything you want -- if you reduce the man's life to two pages of text. Summarizations of this kind are by their very nature suspicious; when dealing with one, we laymen, being aware of our lack of requisite knowledge, start by looking at the author -- could this person deliver at all, is he qualified? A knowledgeable specialist may be able to summarize a lot of information in a small volume in a meaningful way. There's no guarantee but at least it is possible.OK, so a credentials check's in order: what's the author's claim to fame? Is he a specialist, in this case, a historian with a track record in a relevant area? Probably not -- based on the enumeration of his whole oeuvre on the back of the first page, he's a professional scribbler on the self-help theme; the only deviation from this is his earlier work on juggling (of all things); there's nothing to suggest he's a competent historian. Well, there's another possibility: has he, perchance, been personally acquanted with some of the personalities used, and can thus offer valuable insights based on his own, informal, experience? Hmmm... that seems even less likely: Plato's long dead and, though not that long, Ghandi's dead too... Well, I'm confused now: is the author actually in a position to analyze Plato's, Jefferson's, Shakespeare's, Ghandi's life? What I, as a layman, can expect from these little essays? Well, if I were a specialist, I could read and find out, I guess. But if I already were a student of, say, Copernick's life, why would I be interested in such a superficial book as this? Otoh, as a layman I may indeed be interested in a digest, but in this case I must be reasonably certain it is a competent work. Brian Magee writing about Schopenhauer seems good: he's a professional philosopher, and he works with Schopnehauer a lot. One Michael Gelb on Columbus though? Now that's a bit different, no? Imo, it will be more gainful -- you will know more more exactly -- simply to read real biographies: maybe then you'll be able to derive some wisdom... MAYBE! Let's be honest, a real context and contents of someone's life are always complex: they simply can't be meaningfully summarized in a couple of pages, especially by a non-specialist. Simply to know, understand another person (even someone we know) is no easy task, let alone extract some surefire rules of thumb from his biography... Though, abstractly, the premise of the book may seem enticing, the actual result seems inadequate. I had a funny thought: it would be quite possible to randomly reshuffle the book's protagonists and assign them anew to the same succession of chapters -- without any loss (or gain.) Needless to say, if credibility is not required, one can fabricate books like that by the dosen; here's how: you simply come up with a number of platitudinous "truths of life" and then, to fortify commonplace with borrowed gravitas, select a matching number of historical figures -- totaly at random: since you'll shrink their lives to a couple of pages, you'll be able to pick what fits the purpose and thus illustrate absolutely anything; there's no need to worry about the targeted individual's personal story having in truth anything to do with what you'll purport to have derived from it. Yes, the results will be specious, but to discover that the reader has to be competent, will need to read critically, and of course, any reader, critical or not, will have to buy the book first -- thus keeping you, the guru, fed and clothed. "Discover Your Genius" is also not well written. It is not abominable either, but it is preachy, catechetical, predictable, formulaic, politically-correct, long-winded at times, inarticulate, and bland. To be fair, there are a few entertaining and useful anecdotes there -- which I've enjoyed, yes, but at what cost! I had to wade through hundreds of disappointing pages to discover a few accidentally curious bits. But OK, gotta give credit when due: I therefore add one star to what otherwise would be a one-star review. To end this note, I'd like to share a few fitting words excerpted from Henry Miller's essay "To Read or Not to Read": "It is not the so-called bad books whose influence I deplore as much as the mediocre ones. A bad book may often exert as stimulating an effect upon the reader as a so-called good book. I say "so-called" because I honestly believe that no man can tell another what may be a good or bad book -- for him. The mediocre work, on the other hand, which is the daily fare for most of us, I regard as harmful because it is produced by automatons for automatons. And it is the automatons among us who are more of a hazard to society than the evil ones. If it is our fate to be destroyed by a bomb, it is the sleepwalker who is most apt to do the trick." Though "Discover Your Genius" is not the worst book of its genre, I feel that on balance, reading it has been a waste of time. YMMV, but check before buying.
Rating:
Summary: A spurious book
Review: You can, I believe, use absolutely anyone's biography to "illustrate" absolutely anything you want -- if you reduce the man's life to two pages of text. Summarizations of this kind are by their very nature suspicious; when dealing with one, we laymen, being aware of our lack of requisite knowledge, start by looking at the author -- could this person deliver at all, is he qualified? A knowledgeable specialist may be able to summarize a lot of information in a small volume in a meaningful way. There's no guarantee but at least it is possible. OK, so a credentials check's in order: what's the author's claim to fame? Is he a specialist, in this case, a historian with a track record in a relevant area? Probably not -- based on the enumeration of his whole oeuvre on the back of the first page, he's a professional scribbler on the self-help theme; the only deviation from this is his earlier work on juggling (of all things); there's nothing to suggest he's a competent historian. Well, there's another possibility: has he, perchance, been personally acquanted with some of the personalities used, and can thus offer valuable insights based on his own, informal, experience? Hmmm... that seems even less likely: Plato's long dead and, though not that long, Ghandi's dead too... Well, I'm confused now: is the author actually in a position to analyze Plato's, Jefferson's, Shakespeare's, Ghandi's life? What I, as a layman, can expect from these little essays? Well, if I were a specialist, I could read and find out, I guess. But if I already were a student of, say, Copernick's life, why would I be interested in such a superficial book as this? Otoh, as a layman I may indeed be interested in a digest, but in this case I must be reasonably certain it is a competent work. Brian Magee writing about Schopenhauer seems good: he's a professional philosopher, and he works with Schopnehauer a lot. One Michael Gelb on Columbus though? Now that's a bit different, no? Imo, it will be more gainful -- you will know more more exactly -- simply to read real biographies: maybe then you'll be able to derive some wisdom... MAYBE! Let's be honest, a real context and contents of someone's life are always complex: they simply can't be meaningfully summarized in a couple of pages, especially by a non-specialist. Simply to know, understand another person (even someone we know) is no easy task, let alone extract some surefire rules of thumb from his biography... Though, abstractly, the premise of the book may seem enticing, the actual result seems inadequate. I had a funny thought: it would be quite possible to randomly reshuffle the book's protagonists and assign them anew to the same succession of chapters -- without any loss (or gain.) Needless to say, if credibility is not required, one can fabricate books like that by the dosen; here's how: you simply come up with a number of platitudinous "truths of life" and then, to fortify commonplace with borrowed gravitas, select a matching number of historical figures -- totaly at random: since you'll shrink their lives to a couple of pages, you'll be able to pick what fits the purpose and thus illustrate absolutely anything; there's no need to worry about the targeted individual's personal story having in truth anything to do with what you'll purport to have derived from it. Yes, the results will be specious, but to discover that the reader has to be competent, will need to read critically, and of course, any reader, critical or not, will have to buy the book first -- thus keeping you, the guru, fed and clothed. "Discover Your Genius" is also not well written. It is not abominable either, but it is preachy, catechetical, predictable, formulaic, politically-correct, long-winded at times, inarticulate, and bland. To be fair, there are a few entertaining and useful anecdotes there -- which I've enjoyed, yes, but at what cost! I had to wade through hundreds of disappointing pages to discover a few accidentally curious bits. But OK, gotta give credit when due: I therefore add one star to what otherwise would be a one-star review. To end this note, I'd like to share a few fitting words excerpted from Henry Miller's essay "To Read or Not to Read": "It is not the so-called bad books whose influence I deplore as much as the mediocre ones. A bad book may often exert as stimulating an effect upon the reader as a so-called good book. I say "so-called" because I honestly believe that no man can tell another what may be a good or bad book -- for him. The mediocre work, on the other hand, which is the daily fare for most of us, I regard as harmful because it is produced by automatons for automatons. And it is the automatons among us who are more of a hazard to society than the evil ones. If it is our fate to be destroyed by a bomb, it is the sleepwalker who is most apt to do the trick." Though "Discover Your Genius" is not the worst book of its genre, I feel that on balance, reading it has been a waste of time. YMMV, but check before buying.
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