Rating: 
Summary: Fortune's foursome
Review:
This 10-year study with volunteers reveals that good fortune is not primarily due to talent, hard work or intelligence. The scientific investigation is based upon interviews and experiments with people who consider themselves lucky; the author concludes that luck is a state of mind that may be cultivated.
Wiseman identifies four principles that underlie a life of good fortune, adherence to which will draw good luck into the life of the individual. These are 1. The belief that you are lucky (lucky people create, notice and act upon chance opportunities. They also have a relaxed attitude to life). 2. Lucky people make success happen by using their intuition and gut feelings. 3. One must expect good fortune, hold fast to this belief and persevere in attempting to achieve your goals. 4. Lucky people have a knack for transforming back luck into good luck. One must affirm your good fortune and have a strong conviction that everything will work out for the best.
The text is illustrated by graphs illustrating the research results plus some black and white illustrations of playing cards. Overall the conclusions are quite impressive and I find the results of the study very convincing. There are plenty of exercises and the book concludes with notes that include bibliographic references. It is heartening to finally see scientific proof of the claims made by sages and esotericists down the ages
Rating: 
Summary: How to Feel Luckier
Review: +++++
The concept of luck or a lucky person is best illustrated with an example. Consider a person who schedules a plane trip. He/she, however, decides at the last minute because of family commitments not to go on the plane trip. A few hours later that person hears on the news that the plane he/she was to go on crashed and all people on board were killed. Now that's what I call a lucky person.
The author, psychologist Richard Wiseman, defines lucky people as those "for whom seemingly chance events tend to work out consistently in their favor."
Thus, I was excited when I read this book's back cover that stated that Wiseman had discovered "four scientific principles of luck." Scientific principles are derived from scientific experiments. (Setting up scientific experiments to measure luck would have to be ingenious.) One of the cornerstones of scientific experiments is that they are objective (meaning to involve no thoughts and feelings).
Sadly and surprisingly (considering Wiseman's credentials) after I read this book, I found that at no point in this book are there any objective tests (that is, scientific experiments) to measure luck. Instead, the people he uses classify themselves as "lucky" or "unlucky" and he takes their subjective (meaning to involve thoughts and feelings) word for it. It is from these people's subjective or anecdotal stories (this book is packed with anecdotal stories) that Wiseman derives his conclusions. (Wiseman also develops "Suggested Exercises" for the reader to do based on this subjective data.)
In other words, this book actually analyses (with the use of graphs) the characteristics of people who think they are lucky. From this analysis of subjective data, Wiseman comes up with "four principles and twelve sub-principles of luck."
This book's cover states that these "four...principles...will change...your life." This may be true. Such things as being more persistent and having a positive attitude are bound to change your life. You might feel luckier as a result. Note however, that feeling luckier and actually changing your luck are two different things.
Finally, this book is easy to read and has "Chapter Summaries." However, this book has no index. This would be all right if the table of contents was detailed. Unfortunately, it is not detailed making it tough to find information that you wish to refer too in the future.
In conclusion, this book does contain principles and sub-principles derived from subjective data that may change your life and that may make you feel luckier.
(First published 2003; acknowledgements; introduction; your luck journal; 3 parts, 9 chapters; main narrative of 200 pages; appendices; notes)
** ½
+++++
Rating: 
Summary: Let me tell you about the book...
Review: All right, this book is as I read someone saying above "no hocus pocus". The COLD fact is there is no psychic crap interferring with tachyons and stuff so that this makes you a lucky or unlucky person. If you believe that (like I think some of the commenters do) then DON'T bother buying this book, try instead some psychokinesis crap and spend the rest of your life trying jedi tricks (btw, to the REALISTIC reader I'd like to point to the Skeptic's Dictionnary, to which WISEMAN did a small contribution AGAINST frauds)
So let's get back to the book. First, what's being lucky? Of course there is no OBJECTIVE measure to "luck". How could there be, since its something one does or doesn't believe! So who is lucky? Or better yet, WHAT is lucky? What is a "lucky" event today may turn out to be the worst thing happening ever! Remember chaos theory?
So in essence, the point in that book is that YOU CREATE your own luck. What he does is to test "lucky" and "unlucky" people (by self-definition) with different classic psychology tests, and from the results tries to dictate some general characteristics.
As I say, it is about YOURSELF. You are the only one to blame for your bad luck (or indeed to congratulate for your good luck!). Let's squarely face it, if you are the kind of person that says "Oh Why me? I am doomed, I am sourrounded with bad karma, i surely deserve this from being a tyran in a previous life!" then you surely deserve it just for being such a jerk!
So, a good book, a book that tells the things as they are. There is no magic. There are no people blessed. We all step into chances, whereas many of us just dont know how to handle them. This book is an honest book, and the results are honest, straight-forward results, that if followed MAY change your attitude towards lucky breaks (if you like to believe things blindly then again this is not a book for you)
Cheerio
Rating:
Summary: Practical Advice for Better Luck
Review: Although the concept of taking concrete steps based upon scientific data to improve your luck seems strange, Dr. Wiseman has developed a few core concepts that allow anyone to increase the amount of good luck they experience. If you are looking for tabulations of double-blind studies on luck, this isn't the book for you. If, however, you want to find out what the average lucky person does that you might be overlooking, this book is a must read. The author adopts a simple workbook/diary approach that allows the reader to improve chance opportunities and develop the tools necessary to capitalize on those opportunities.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad.... not bad at all
Review: First, I disagree with Arlea's review that the whole book should be tossed out because he let people rate themselves as "lucky" or "unlucky" -- frankly, if you think you're lucky, you ARE. I mean, what could be luckier than having a positive attitude and always looking on the bright side? People who have that sunny disposition ARE lucky, and they know it. It doesn't matter whether they're "objectively" lucky (and who decides what's "objectively" lucky -- is it having lots of money? not necessarily...) My quibble with the book is that the entire thing can be summed up in one sentence ("Be a bubbly optimist who always looks on the bright side, and you'll be more open to life & have more luck!"). He pads this out with anecdotes and graphs and so on, but it's like a sophomore trying to pad out his termpaper. The luckiest people will be the ones who read the excerpt above and don't spend $... for the "book"!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Lucky Read Indeed
Review: I had heard of similar books on attracting luck. I did like this book in that it showed practical and logical methods to being more "lucky". There is no hokus pokus in Wiseman's theory.
Only drawback that it is a little stodgy in the writing and it is not long enough. Still anyone who is looking for a change in their fortunes should consider this title.
Rating:
Summary: A Penny for My Thoughts
Review: I saw the author, Dr. Richard Wiseman, on television the day before yesterday and was intrigued, so I bought the book a couple of hours later. I've never particularly considered myself either lucky or unlucky. But I've always felt there was more to luck than mere chance. Wiseman posits just that point.This book reminds me a bit of Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Carnegie's book was groundbreaking because at the time it was written there was hardly anything in the popular press about worryÑas opposed to today. Ha! Likewise, this may be a ground breaking book on the topic of luck. The author's style is similar to Carnegie'sÑeasy to read, upbeat, lots of anecdotes, and "principles" to follow. I especially enjoyed Dr. Wiseman's references to his earlier career as a magician. I'm going to follow the author's advice and keep a "Luck Journal" for the next thirty days. Thus far, one hour after finishing the book, I've found one penny on the sidewalk.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe Change Your Life. Forget About Changing Your Luck!
Review: Richard Wiseman heads a research unit in the psychology department at the University of Hertfordshire, so you'd think he'd know something about experimental methodology. Unfortunately, you'd never guess it by reading this book. Wiseman claims that his research has revealed that 'the real explanation behind luck lies in four basic psychological principles'. The selling point of 'The Luck Factor' is these principles to can be used to 'make unlucky people lucky, and lucky people even luckier.' The main difficulty with this claim is that at no point in his book does Wiseman present any sort of objective test for 'luck'. Rather, his subjects classify themselves as 'lucky' or 'unlucky' (and he simply takes their word for it) or else they are classified by him as such based on their own subjective evaluation of the degree to which they share certain characteristics with people who see themselves as either 'lucky' or 'unlucky'. Since the 'four principles' are based on data about people who feel lucky, rather than people who are lucky in some objective sense, the only honest claim that could be made based on Wiseman's research is that some people who follow his 'four principles' might begin to think of themselves as luckier. The problem with using people's subjective evaluation of their own luckiness is revealed in an experiment (presented early in the book) to determine whether 'lucky' people have more psychic ability than 'unlucky' people. Seven hundred volunteers who phoned in upon viewing a particular television programme (Random population sample? Why bother?) were asked to categorise themselves as lucky, unlucky or neutral based on how well they felt they matched Wiseman's 'Lucky Description' or 'Unlucky Description'. Here's the Lucky description for reference (complete with grammatical errors): "Lucky people are people for whom seemingly chance events tend to work out consistently in their favour. For example, they seem to win more than their fair share of raffles and lotteries, or to accidentally meet people who can help them in some way, or their good fortune might play an important role in them achieving their ambitions and goals." All of the volunteers entered the same draw of the National Lottery, buying an average of three tickets each. None of the subjects won more than £56 pounds (that amount was won by two participants, one 'lucky' and one 'unlucky'). On average both 'lucky' and 'unlucky' participants lost about £2.50. Wiseman's conclusion: 'The results indicated that luck wasn't due to psychic ability'. The results indicate something entirely different to me. The description of 'lucky' specifically talks about winning lotteries. Yet people who classified themselves as 'lucky' according to this description didn't do any better at the lottery than those who classified themselves as 'unlucky' (though 'lucky' people's expectations of winning were more than twice as high as those of 'unlucky' people). This would seem to indicate that the 'lucky' people who participated in this experiment were anything but. They may have been more optimistic, unrealistic, or self-deluding, but they weren't luckier. Wiseman comments: "When it comes to random events like the lottery, such expectations count for little. Someone with a high expectation of winning will do as well as someone with a low expectation. However, life is not like a lottery. Often our expectations make a difference. They make a difference to whether we try something, how hard we persist in the face of failure, how we interact with others and how others interact with us." That's all very true, but when Wiseman admits that expectations 'count for little' when it comes to 'random events' he is more or less admitting that they have nothing to do with luck. Wiseman goes on to analyse the characteristics of 'Lucky' people (i.e. those who think they are lucky, but probably aren't any luckier than the rest of us) and finds that they have several things in common. Unsurprisingly, they expect good fortune and they see the positive side to random events (for example, having just broken her leg in a freak accident, an 'unlucky' person would say 'It was bad luck' whereas a 'lucky' person would tend to say 'I'm lucky I wasn't killed'). Much of the evidence given in this book is anecdotal and many of the anecdotes intended to illustrate someone's luck or lack thereof fail miserably. Women who end up in successive abusive relationships are described as 'unlucky in love', though choice, not luck, determines who we marry; and a person who gets involved with someone she doesn't fully trust is better characterised as 'desperate' than 'unlucky'. Similarly, we hear anecdotes about 'lucky' people who enter contests and win prizes. We later learn that entering contests is their hobby and it's only because they enter so many that they win. Statistical probability is involved here, not luck. But Wiseman doesn't hesitate to extract 'ways to improve your luck' from these instances. The women who are 'unlucky in love' are meant to show how we can improve our luck by trusting our intuition. (Despite the fact that they had blatant, as well as intuitive, indicators that their men were jerks). The contest winners supposedly illustrate that we can improve our luck by being more persistent-- though I fail to see how increasing one's chances of achieving something through deliberate, persistent and calculated effort has anything to do with 'luck'. I'm sure some of the clichéd suggestions in this book (e.g. positive thinking and networking) will help some readers (those who haven't heard it all before) to improve their chances of achieving their goals. I doubt any of them will help readers to improve their luck. My opinion of this book would have been much higher if the author had straightforwardly framed his findings in terms of 'How to make the most of your opportunities.' I really would like to read some properly conducted scientific research which addresses the question of whether some people are innately luckier than others and, if so, what characteristics they share. Unfortunately, Dr. Wiseman seems to have different interests.
Rating:
Summary: A program for living, not research about luck.
Review: The book disappointed me. There is no definition of what luck is or how it can be measured. Luck in this book doesn't have anything to do with chance events. People who think they are happy, self satisified, and consider themselves lucky, are lucky. They answer some questionaires about themselves in the same way. Unlucky people have common answers too and get lower scores. But Dr. Wiseman doesn't give his tests to random people and check how well the test measure luck in the general sense (for example does indebtedness correlate well with high scores). You get to rate yourself against his pool of data to see if you're lucky or unlucky. Finally, there are some exercises you can do that will help you improve your lot in life, and thereby your luck or is it the other way around. The advice is quite sensible and easy to follow, but it's not going to help you draw to an inside straight the next time you need to.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad.... not bad at all
Review: The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman is definitely one of the more interesting/entertaining books I have read in my lifetime. I am not much of an avid book reader, but I do know a good book when I read one. Throughout the book, the doctor details the data gathered from many people of various types who he studied to discover just what exactly makes one person "luckier" than another. One thing he found was that persons who exert themselves socially create more contacts and more opportunities for "lucky" events. He spent eight years doing many elaborate tests and comparing the data from these tests. And with the results, he compiled this masterpiece book that everyone should read--especially the unlucky!
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