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I didn't love this book. It basically enumerates anecdotes about successful people — for some definition of success I'm not too excited about — which are by definition prone to survivorship bias, followed by just-so stories in an attempt to extract some generalisable principles, and then follows that up with anecdotes of "regular people" who had some remarkable experiences supposedly due to applying those principles.

The anecdotes did little to serve as convincing arguments for the truth of the principles, which made the book feel like there was a lot of filler content just to turn a short list of principles into a full book. For example, there's the anecdote about the guy who complimented someone's interior, and then went on to be gifted a car. Sure, it's a fun anecdote, but it's also clearly the exception.

Another example I can't resist to mention: apparently the young H.G. Wells was deeply unhappy working in some lanky basement, surrounded by rats. After writing a former teacher about his predicament, that teacher made the small effort to tell him that he believed in him, and thereby turned his life around. Oh and by the way, he also offered him a better job as a teacher, but surely that had nothing to do with it.

However, it's not necessarily a useless book. All of us have the experience of all the years we've been on this earth, and with that, are rather well-equipped to judge how people respond in certain situations — at least when given the time to ponder. So while not all principles are useful (the principles in part 2 all basically come down to "be genuine in your appreciation", which has to come naturally by definition) and some are redundant, many of them are concrete enough to be able to relate them to situations in your own life in which in hindsight, it's clear that it would have been better for your relationships if you had not flaunted them, even if they are not a sure-fire way to achieve your goals.

Whether this book will actually help you to prevent that mistake in the future? I have yet to find out.

Along the way I sometimes felt like I'd lost track of the main thread of the book, but it all came together rather gratifyingly in the end, and I do feel like I came away with a clearer understanding of the world we live in and the humans we live among.

There's a lot that could be said about the at times somewhat condescending tone, or the scientific accuracy of their quiz questions, but I think almost every reader of this very accessible book will come out of it with a better understanding of the world and what we can do —and have successfully been doing— to make it better. What more could you ask of it?