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Rating:  Summary: Nice try Review: ... This is a great history of social entrepreneurs, military leaders, and other great strategists who figured out how to get what they wanted. Great short chapters on Joan of Arc, Patton, Alice Paul and the suffragists, Japan, and even Picasso and Matisse. Turned out for me to be an excellent source of fun cocktail party chatter. But it is a very very good and unusual kind of self-help book. Yes, the book is NOT about military strategy, but is is about strategy in personal life. I thought it was better than a ton of other popular history or self help books. It helped me understand how to be more successful at figuring out how to get what I want. On the cover General Wesley Clark calls this a "very important book" and I agree!
Rating:  Summary: Fascinating, useful, and well-written! Review: ... This is a great history of social entrepreneurs, military leaders, and other great strategists who figured out how to get what they wanted. Great short chapters on Joan of Arc, Patton, Alice Paul and the suffragists, Japan, and even Picasso and Matisse. Turned out for me to be an excellent source of fun cocktail party chatter. But it is a very very good and unusual kind of self-help book. Yes, the book is NOT about military strategy, but is is about strategy in personal life. I thought it was better than a ton of other popular history or self help books. It helped me understand how to be more successful at figuring out how to get what I want. On the cover General Wesley Clark calls this a "very important book" and I agree!
Rating:  Summary: Nice try Review: but no cigar...he was Emperor of the French.
Rating:  Summary: Glib and deceptive Review: The title is deceptive. The book does not focus on the strategy of Napoleon beyond the second chapter.The often repetitive book (I found several instances of wholesale cut & pastes of text) reduces great thinkers of strategy to two sentence summaries. It never clearly argues its point, and in the second to last chapter outrageously refers to the stories of Christian saints as "fables". I'm sorry, but a member of a strategy group in New York City, in this century, looking back on the whole of human experience in war and religion reducing great thinkers and profound events to short glib interpretation is OUTRAGEOUS.
Rating:  Summary: He could have said this so much better!!!! Review: There are a few tidbits of useful info in this slender volume, but it should NEVER be confused as containing valuable, factual historical analysis beyond the most general of circumstances. Perhaps the reason for this is that the author's reading of history is simply wrong. Take the small chapter on Napoleon as an example. The author repeatedly calls Napoleon the "emperor of europe"...gag... he was "Emperor of France." And the author misses entirely the most important the issues of his battlefield genius, and totally misunderstands the 1812 campaign and WHY Napoleon went for Moscow. Hummm...perhaps he should have expanded his shallow source reading on Napleon's campaigns to far better works than the lone, vastly-overrated military work listed in the back. His information on Patton and Joan of Arc is also very superficial and lacking any meaningful depth (and the dust jacket touts the author as currently writing "a forthcoming scholarly study of strategy"?). In retrospect, I understand what the author is trying to say and how he wants to convey the concept of "coup d'oeil" to folks for their use in everyday life. However, because of all the factual errors and superficial conclusions drawn from such shallow study, the author's message is significantly weakened. Therefore, because of the way the book is presented, I could have gleaned all useful info out of this by quickly reading through it.
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