Who you know determines how effectively you can apply what you know.
This is the purpose behind the entire book: teach you how to build relationships so that you can be more successful at what you do. In the few weeks that I have been practicing what he preached, I am amazed at the results. It’s a fast read and shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get through. Read it.
I read Think like a Billionaire by Donald Trump over the weekend.
I have always enjoyed Trump’s books—their short reads with short chapters, and while they lack depth, they (usually) have plenty of little morsels (not quite enough to call food) for thought. Besides, it’s always interesting to hear a billionaire’s perspective—after all, he did something right. 
This book, though, just fell flat. I guess I was expecting more interesting insight into the billionaire mind, and there wasn’t much in there that I hadn’t already heard elsewhere. In fact, the ideas in the book were so redundant with other books about success, I found only two take-aways—and they were both given in the same chapter:
The two hours I spent reading the book weren’t completely wasted, though. After all, it’s encouraging to think that, before even reading the book, I had all the knowledge needed to become a billionaire. Now, I just need to get off my ass and put that knowledge to work.
Was thinking more about Pressfield’s Virtues of War. Specifically: why did Alexander die at 32? And what does the book’s title mean? In ferreting out the answers, I found a key life lessons.
First, let me review two important passages that will help answer both questions. The first passage details an encounter with a group of gymnosophists.
One of my pages, a bright lad named Agathon, was striding ahead to clear the lane, when he came upon a troupe of gymnosophists taking the sun in the public way. These declined to vacate for my passage. An altercation broke out between the boy and several vendors, who took up the cudgels on the renunciants’ behalf. A crowd fathered. By the time I arrived, a full-blown incident was in prgress. The nut of the quarrel was this: Who was the more worthy to possess the right-of-way—Alexander or the gymnosophists? As I reined-in, Agathon stood in spirited exhange with the eldest of the wise men. Indicating me, the lad declared,”This man has conquered the world! What have you done?” The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
And the second passage is from Hephaestion, a close friend of Alexander’s, ranting at Alexander to give up conquest and return home—this comes after several years of war that has led the army thousands of miles away from home—farther than any Greek army had traveled.
“Till Persepolis I stood with you, Alexander. Wrongs done to Greece must be avenged. But we have slain Persia’s king. We have burned her capital; we have made ourselves masters over all her lands. Now what?” He gestures east, across the river. “Shall we conquer these honest yeomen next? Why? How have they harmed us? By what right do we bring war against them? Pursuit of glory? This army stopped being glorious a long time ago. Or shall we cite Achilles and say we emulate the ‘virtues of war’? Rubbish! Any virtue carried to its extreme becomes a vice. Conquest? No man can rule another. The most devoted subject will trade in an instant his wealth, earned beneath your rule, for poverty he can call his own. We had a cause. We have none now.”
I don’t think Alexander wanted to conquer the world. Rather, he had a burning need to prove himself to be the greatest warrior and general on earth, which could only be proven by defeating all other armies and their commanders. And in the end, he was never able to conquer this need to prove himself. He pushed his generals and his army too hard—to the point that they became afraid of their own success and eventually refused to continue.
Shortly after his return to Babylon, he died—died because he could not stop. His obsession with the virtues of war became his vice, and eventually destroyed him. At least, that’s my supposition.
If taken in this light, the book’s title, then, describes war (or any other undertaking of genius) as a double-edged sword: it’s virtues, if not controlled, are it’s most dangerous vices. That is, if you let the virtue of your genius define who you are, it will destroy you.
I just finished Virtues of War. A brilliant book. Whether Pressfield captured the spirit of Alexander, I am not sure, but he did capture the spirit of a great leader—not just a military leader, but a man who understood how to drive people to excel beyond their wildest dreams.
There are so many great passages in this book—so many great lessons. One of my favorites is:
We as officers debate our routes and strategies. What we forget is that the men do the same. They are not stupid. They see the country change; they know what they are marching into. In their tents and around their cook fires, they chew over every fresh piece of intelligence. We in the command post have our source; the corporals and private soldiers have theirs too. Daylong they interrogate the natives tracking the column, the rabble in the towns we pass through, the whores and sutlers of the general crowd, and, of course, one another. A racehorse cannot gallop the column’s length faster than the newest rumor or the freshest fear.
Alexander understood that the only way to combat these rumors was to build trust with your soldiers. You won’t stop the rumors, but if your people trust you, they are less likely to fear the changing landscape.
What’s really interesting about this passage is its applicability to the modern world. With Internet technologies, such as blogs, we can provide greater transparency to our employees, co-workers, and customers. With so many shady business practices, transparency is even more vital to building trusting relationships.
So, I’m really grooving on this book Everyday Speech: How to say what you mean by Bess Sondel. She has an amazing grasp on human interaction. What most amazes me about it: the first edition was published in 1950. All the experts that have come since then are, in many cases, just rehashing ideas found in her book.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read three great books[1] from the first half of the twentieth century, and now I’m really wondering what other gems are out there.
Those great books were:
