How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive! [Paperback]

Mr James Altucher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2011

Building from the core you can create the luck you need, the health you want, and find the wealth, success, and happiness you seek. This book describes the techniques I've used throughout my life to get the luck I needed to get through both the hard times and the great times.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

LISTEN! You've been hypnotized. You've been told you need a corporate job. You need a college degree. You need stability. You need the white picket fence. 

Snap your fingers in front of your face. The American Religion is a myth. You don't need the superficial external manifestations of the American Myth. Building from the core you can create the luck you need, the health you want, and find the success you seek.

Stability is only in your mind. There's $15 Trillion dollars in our economy, recession or no recession. It's falling like snow. Reach out with your tongue and taste it.

About the Author

James Altucher has failed and succeeded at a bunch of different businesses. He's written six books. He has fun in life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (April 24, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1461120705
• ISBN-13: 978-1461120704
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #589,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Altucher is a writer, successful entrepreneur, chess master, and investor.

He has founded over 20 companies and sold some of them for large exits. He has also run venture capital funds, hedge funds, angel funds, and currently sits on the boards of many companies.

He has written and been profiled in most major national media publications like the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CNBC, Forbes, and Business Week.

His blog, which began by detailing Altucher's precipitousfall from wealth and success to absolute rock bottom and then back to wealth, has attracted more than 10 million readers since its launch in 2010, and in 2011 inspired a comic book.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 109 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive and rambling May 23, 2011

By Rainy Day Reader

Format:Paperback

According to the intro, "How to be the Luckiest Person Alive" is supposed to "unleash the core that will drive you from desire to ambition to meaning." Readers can be forgiven if they are still a confused. This book isn't The Secret and it's not going to help you figure out what your life means. It also won't talk about luck.

So what does the book actually cover? A lot. An awful lot. Everything from whether to buy a house, what to do when you're suddenly wealthy, why to avoid college, and how to fire employees. It's nominally about some very high-level generalities about running startup businesses.

The biggest problem is that everything is in lists. Long lists. Long lists with little supporting detail or emphasis. Any real points quickly get lost as he races from one bullet to the next, with no hint which is essential, which is a joke and which is just filler. In one classic chapter, he rattles off over 80 "rules" for a business. Some some like crucial, vital pieces of information like "get a customer" and "be profitable". These rules sound like they can make or break a business and should always be followed. Other rules sound like handy tips, like "have killer parties" and "at Christmas, donate money to every customer's favorite charity." By the time you've droned through ten pages, everything blurs and the really key ideas (whichever they were) are lost. And since it is just a long list of rules, most readers will forget them before the chapter is done.

After he goes through several anecdotes including an uncomfortable chapter when he seems fixated on how much sex and drugs he did in college, the useful content more or less fizzes out. There's no real conclusion and nothing to wrap it up. Instead, as if to ensure that we forget everything, we get almost 100 pages of direct reprints of various blog articles which are, you guessed it, more lists. And since they were blog posts, each chapter is disconnected from everything which came before and after.

He writes very well as a blogger. The list format is a natural fit and writing short, self-contained essays is a virtue. As a book however, it is a failure. My advice is to subscribe to his blog and skip the book.

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars As an Altucher fan, I am very disappointed May 31, 2011

By JO

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am a regular reader of James Altucher's blog, and immediately purchased this book when I learned of it. I was excited to read this, but am very disappointed. The book is basically a copy and paste rehash of his blog posts. On his blog, he admits that it took him three weeks to put this book together. It shows. The book is full of misspellings and typos. One of the chapters invites readers to leave a comment in the comment section - obviously something that should have been edited out when pasting from his blog.

I really wanted to like this book, however it is so sloppy that it is almost unreadable.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Eats Your Time Worse Than All Those Blogs & FaceBook June 2, 2011

By Tim Atkinson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book falls into the Janis Joplin category "It's so good don't ever start." It's really hard not to read another chapter. I found myself reading instead of working. I am buying more copies for my entrepreneur buddies.

Altucher has screwed up more deals, passed up more opportunities, and utterly thrown away more money than anybody I know. He tells you exactly how he did it. As he points out, you learn most from your mistakes, and he's learned a lot.

I've read the other reviews. They all are truthful. Your expectations will become your reality.

So just buy the book, OK? Your Margarita last night cost more. But this is funny and lasts longer.