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Robert Greene’s Books That you Should Read
Table of Contents
Robert Greene, born in Los Angeles in 1959, comes from a middle-class Jewish family. Robert’s father worked as a cleaning supplies salesman, and his mother cared for the house. As a child, he received a good education from his parents. Greene entered the University of California at Berkley and later studied at the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in classical studies.
However, after completing his degree, Greene’s life was different than planned. So he decided to travel to Europe, where he worked in various professions such as translator, film editor, magazine editor, and even as a bricklayer in construction. Says he worked 80 jobs before becoming an author.
As early as 1995, Robert Greene was in Italy, working as a writer for a factory, when he met a book packager. Greener then presented his idea of a possible book, “Power,” better known as the (48 Laws of Power) to his new friend, who liked the idea.
This was his first published book, and he sold over a million copies worldwide, making it his first bestseller. It was also translated into 24 languages, and his success continues today. Currently, the author has 6 books published: The 48 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. Before we introduce Robert Greene best books, let’s talk more about the author.
About the Author
And now, let’s know a little more about Robert Greene’s books. Robert Greene’s most significant characteristic is to be pragmatic. The author’s books are didactic works because he brings strategies and tips based on applied psychology of how you can do to achieve your goals.
However, many people do not like the author because they say his works are amoral, without ethics or empathy for the human being. If you are down-to-earth and not so naive, you will understand the messages the author passes. He also cites several historical examples, using this as a basis for his strategies and action plans with these historical contextualizations.
The 48 Laws of Power
The 48 laws of power bring tactics about power maneuvers. The inspiration for this book came from great personalities in history, such as Queen Elizabeth, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz, among others. The book became popular with many different classes of people, Green’s bestseller. Still, his book received a lot of criticism because it reported the world as a place full of betrayal and mind games.
Robert Greene’s Laws aim to push people to become powerful, to stand out, and not to let themselves be cheated and have the rug pulled from under their eyes. It is a book that shows how people can manipulate you. As such, it is one of the author’s most famous books.
The Art of Seduction
The author released his second book in 2001, The Art of Seduction, divided into a few parts. Part one is about seductive personality, where the author shows excellent artistic characters considered alluring, such as the Mermaid and Cleopatra. Greene identifies, categorizes types of seduction, and explains these aspects and things you should not do, causing you to ruin a temptation.
In the book’s second part, the author will talk about the victim theory; he lists 18 types of people and personalities and how to seduce each individual, with appropriate strategies for each situation. He says that each person has a specific need.
And throughout the chapters, he will describe the seduction process step by step, how to get the person’s attention, how to get a date, how to find out what the person likes, and others. He talks about these various steps until the seduction becomes physical.
And at the end of the book, he talks about sales and marketing, how television companies use all these strategies to sell to the general public, and how they convince us to consume, to buy, to watch. And then, he goes on to talk about how seduction works within marketing.
The 33 Strategies of War
Greene studied several military strategists. He wants to know what strategies they used in wars to achieve success and their failures and put in his book 33 procedures that can help people. The book provides guidelines on how to use principles of warfare in episodes of our daily lives. The third book was published in 2006 and is inspired by various historical events. The book is divided into 5 parts.
The first part is about self-directed warfare, how to get the best out of yourself, like focus, discipline, and dedication. Because we know that in our world if you don’t have this as a goal, everything can become a failure, and things are not accessible. We need plans and strategies to survive; he describes this in his book about how you become disciplined.
When people get together, they tend to have conflicts. We know that this is also complicated because each person has a personality. In this part of the book, he will talk about this thought. Part two concerns teamwork, group work, and how to get along better within groups.
In the third part, the author talks about defensive warfare, when people attack you; from that moment, you are quiet in your corner and receive an attack. What can be the best ways that you will have to defend yourself, whether it will be a counter-attack, keeping quiet, or being aggressive? He lists ways for you to use your defense as best as possible.
The fourth part discusses offensive warfare, when you attack or take a person by surprise. You are in the attacking position. How you handle the front of it and surprise your enemies.
And the fifth part is about dirty war, about dishonest strategies so that you can destabilize your enemies. It brings many examples of how you can act and, this way, defend yourself from these attitudes to have time for a reaction.
And finally, this book will be perfect for learning persuasion techniques, attack self-defense, and so on. You will learn a lot about history because you will see many case studies, accounts of historical facts, battles, wars, and fascinating historical figures.
The 50th Act
Greene wrote this book in partnership with rapper 50 Cent, one of the most miniature books written by the author. A book with the idea to call the public to read this author’s book, compared with his other denser books. Thus, it was written in a more popular language, containing some slang and expressions.
For example, the author wanted to conquer an audience that would not read The 48 Laws of Power. This work is like a summary of all the author’s other results. It is not so deep. It would be introductory work for those who want to read Greene’s books.
The book’s structure is very similar to the others, but with a smoother and easier way of reading Robert Greene. This book will talk specifically about the life of rapper 50 Cent, telling about various moments in his life. Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent, was a poor guy who lived in a dangerous neighborhood surrounded by a not-very-good reality.
Where he got involved in drug trafficking, suffered attacks, was arrested, and had a complicated career in crime. He decided he wanted to be a musician, but not a typical rapper. He wanted to innovate in the market. Curtis James was very daring in the techniques he used to innovate.
He didn’t want to be a hostage of the big record companies, he wanted to have his own record company, and that’s what the rapper managed to do and was successful. Then, the opportunity arose for Greene to talk about some of the techniques that 50 Cent used to achieve all this.
But of course, the author does not focus only on the artist; he quotes several other great names, such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Leonardo da Vinci. He mentions several other words of relevant characters to discuss the principles he advocates and believes in.
Mastery
This work of the author will demystify what would be a genius. In the book Mastery, you will realize that all these great people we consider geniuses had one thing in common, work, discipline, and dedication. The book cites a small bibliography of several important historical figures, such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Mozart, and Charles Darwin.
He makes a small biography of them and shows how they dedicated their lives to their work and how they studied. Sometimes, we forget that these great names were ordinary people but that they dedicated a lot to reach their goals. We often only see the final result: the person was a genius. Still, they put a lot of effort and dedication into conquering what they wanted. Then this way, reached mastery, that there was no magic formula.
All that is great in life requires hard work, and nothing falls from the sky. If you want something, you need to pursue it, but you will have a job and need dedication and determination. In this book, Greene shows the value of work, effort, and sweat, behind great geniuses.
The most significant merit of Greene’s job is to show people that dedication, commitment, and action, can indeed overcome talent. Because it’s no use being super-talented and not being dedicated, hard-working and disciplined. The book is a practical manual on how to achieve mastery. The book is divided into six organized parts so that you can do a self-assessment and will give you step-by-step strategies for you to achieve your goals.
Part One: Discover your vocation and your life mission.
Part Two: Submit to reality, ideal learning.
Part Three: Incorporate the power of the master and the dynamic of the mentor.
Part Four: See people as they really are, social intelligence.
Part Five: Awaken the dimensional mind, the active, creative phase.
Part Six: Combine the intuitive with the rational mastery.
In this way, the author shows that there is a lot of work involved in becoming a great master or a genius and that there are no magic formulas. On the contrary, there is a lot of delivery, sacrifice, and commitment to getting where you want.
The Laws of Human Nature
This book is about understanding people’s motivations and which they may not be aware of. It is explicitly an extensive work with many chapters. This work by Greene has many branches, two of which are briefly summarized below.
- How to master your emotional side, about how you react immediately when something happens.
- Transform self-esteem into empathy.
- See behind the masks, where he brings the idea that many things people say are not true, Greene gives tools to identify how to perceive these events.
- Determine the strength of character of people.
- Become an unattainable object of desire.
- Elevate your perspective.
- Lower people’s resistance by confirming their opinion of themselves. That is mirroring.
- Change your circumstances by changing your attitude.
- Confront your dark side.
- Be careful with the fragile ego
- Know your limits.
- Reconnect with the feminine and masculine within you.
- Move forward with a sense of purpose.
- Resist the downward pressure of the group, and teach yourself how not to be a tomboy. For example, show yourself how to have your own life and reading of the world.
- Make others want to follow you.
- See the hostility behind the friendly facade, which talks about envy, knowing how to dominate and perceive these signs.
- Take advantage of the historical moment, know how to observe what is hot in fashion, and use that.
- Meditate on our shared mortality. It brings the idea that no matter how intelligent you are, you will die one day; you are not a god.
Rober Greene Best Books: Final Thoughts
Robert Greene is a great writer. He is noble in how he approaches different subjects that are part of our daily lives. Some don’t like how he comes to such topics, and some don’t. It is necessary to interpret it correctly, but what may be correct for me may be for someone else.
Everything has a positive and negative side, and information cannot be neglected and censored. This would be a step backward. This may be your chance if you have not read any of his works.
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