“The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene
This is the Robert Greene book that I read the slowest. Not because of it’s big size, but because of the wealth of wisdom at almost every page that made me stop and think way too frequently. And ok, because of its size.
While he has written about power, seduction, war strategies, and mastery, he has never actually dived deeper (way deeper) before into the one thing that connects all of these topics together: human nature. And this is what this book is ultimately about.
In an unmistakable, Robert Greene-esque, manner, this book uses many stories from the huge archive of history that are hand-picked to be the perfect examples for the vast literature in psychology amassed over the last one hundred years. It is academic psychology meets the legendary ruthlessness of Robert Greene that turns the precious information into actionable strategies.
As Greene himself remarked, “[c]onsider The Laws of Human Nature a kind of codebook for deciphering people’s behavior—ordinary, strange, destructive, the full gamut. Each chapter deals with a particular aspect or law of human nature. We can call them laws in that under the influence of these elemental forces, we humans tend to react in relatively predictable ways.”
Never thought that Robert Greene can outdo himself, but my God he just did it.
EDWIN SETIADI 