Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Mastery

Top positive review

A groundbreaking resource on achieving mastery on any field.

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2023

The author delves into the intricacies of achieving mastery in any field, offering profound insights that resonate with readers seeking excellence in their pursuits. His approach is both enlightening and pragmatic. He draws upon the wisdom of historical figures like Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Leonardo da Vinci, as well as interviews with contemporary Masters, to uncover the secrets to their extraordinary success. He explores the essence of mastery, emphasizing the significance of a dedicated apprenticeship, absorbing the hidden knowledge of experts, and breaking free from established norms.

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joshua king

Not happy

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2023

All of the gold on the book is just smearing and wiping off, I feel like I got ripped off! The book is of course great but the quality is terrible.

2 people found this helpful

9,058 total ratings, 1,466 with reviews

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Christopher S

A groundbreaking resource on achieving mastery on any field.

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2023

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Mike Mertens

Powerful work on finding your life's purpose and developing a path to mastery

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2013

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This is an extremely powerful work on how to achieve mastery in one's life. Mastery can be thought of as the unique way each of us can fully actualize our potential for greatness and enjoy a fulfilling life.

Achieving Mastery in life is a lot of work but it is the way to a flourishing life (a life of self-fulfillment). Spinoza's quote "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare" came to mind several times as I read the book. The author provides ideas and strategies that can improve the process for those willing to expend the effort. I plan to re-read and work with the ideas and strategies covered in this book and apply them to my personal context. I also plan to purchase copies of the book for my wife and 2 teenage sons so they can benefit from this material as well.

The work begins by discussing how to discover one's purpose in life. This is unique to each individual and needs to be well thought through. The author gives 5 strategies for finding your life's task and illustrates these strategies with historical and contemporary figures. Two of the strategies he discusses that really gave me a lot to think about are:
1. ) Occupy the perfect niche - the Darwinian strategy. In this strategy you need to find the career niche that best fits your interests and talents and then evolve that niche over time. I found the eaxample of V.S. Ramachandran very interesting
2.) Let go of the past - the adaptation strategy. The following quote from this section that really resonated with me:
"You must adapt your Life's Task to these circumstances. You do not hold on to past ways of doing things, because it will ensure you will fall behind and suffer for it. You are flexible and looking to adapt."

The author then covers the Apprentice Phase which he breaks into 3 steps:
1.) Deep Observation - the Passive Mode
2.) Skills Acquisition - the Practice Mode
3.) Experimentation - The Active Mode

There are detailed strategies for completing the ideal appenticeship. These are illustrated by examples. 2 of my favorites in this section were "move toward resistance and pain" as illustrated by the example of Bill Bradley and "apprentice yourself in failure" as illustrated by Henry Ford. All 8 strategies are worth thinking about in detail.

The next section covers learning through a Mentor and is one of the best parts of the book. The example of Michael Faraday is used as a great illustration. There are strategies discussed for finding the appropriate mentor(s), knowing when to break away from the mentor and what to do if you cannot find a mentor (the example here is Thomas Edison and there is an interesting tie-back to Faraday). Having a mentor is the most effective way to gain deep knowledge of a field in the least amount of time - it greatly accelerates that path to Mastery.

The next section deals with social intelligence and seeing people as they are. Benjamin Franklin is used as an example. There are 7 deadly realities covered in this section (envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness and passive aggression) as well as strategies for acquiring social intelligence.

The fifth section is on awakening the dimensional mind. This is where you see more and more aspects of reality and develop ways to become more creative (and not get stuck in the past). There are several strategies on creativity discussed in detail. I found the discussion on ways to alter one's perspective especially illuminating. These include avoiding:
* Looking at the "what" instead of the "how"
* Rushing to generalities and ignoring details
* Confirming paradigms and ignoring anomalies - (key quote: "...anomalies themselves contain the richest information. They often reveal to us the flaws in our paradigms and open up new ways of looking at the world")
* fixating on what is present, ignoring what is absent (Sherlock Holmes example)

The section continues with strategies and examples for this "creative-active" phase. My favorite was a section on Mechanical Intelligence with the Wright Brothers as an example.

The Final Section is on Mastery as the fusing of the Intuitive with the Rational. The strategies in this section are very powerful and I will be returning to them again and again. Here are the 7 strategies:
1.) Connect to your environment
2.) Play to your strengths (this is very important - see further thoughts on this below)
3.) Transform yourself through practice
4.) Internalize the details - the life force (Leonardo Da Vinci example)
5.) Widen your vision
6.) Submit to the other - the Inside Out perspective
7.) Synthesize all forms of knowledge

This is a very powerful book filled with a lot of good ideas and strategies. There are ideas I plan to continue to "chew" on and think more deeply about while I work to integrate these ideas and strategies into my personal context.

A lot of the book stresses the importance of self-discipline, persevering through difficult challenges, the importance of an adaptive and active mind, independent thinking and integrating all of one's knowledge. Here are a few recommendations I would make to augment the material covered in this book:
1.) For Self-Displine and Willpower (and perseverance):
Willpower by Tierney and Baumeister
The Power of Habit by Duhigg
Grit (see TED Talk by Angela Duckworth and the GRIT assessment as well - Grit Assessment can be found at: available at [...])
2.) For an adaptive/active mindset (and recovering from failure)
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Apapt by Tim Harford
3.) For a great fictional example of many of the ideas covered in the book, I would recommend Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (Roark as a positive example; Keating as a negative example of what the author calls "the false self")
4.) Other Real world examples
Richard Feynman (see his books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" and "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out"
5.) Finding your strengths
Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
VIA Survey of Character Strengths (available at [...])

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Gail

Wondering where to start reading RG? Start here.

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2023

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I have immensely enjoyed this book. Looking forward to my reading time everyday. I am an avid reader of The Daily Laws, The Daily Stoic, and so on.

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Thrasybulus

The Master Delivers

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2013

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There are countless self-help books--some good, some trite. Then there are self-help books that revolutionize the genre.

Robert Greene's Mastery is such a book. It's Greene's fifth book broadly tackling the art of strategy, and like all his books, it's entertaining, educational, densely packed with biographies of powerful and interesting people, and almost completely devoid of fluff.

Greene's overarching thesis challenges the conventional notion of "genius" as a genetic gift bestowed upon a handful of individuals--Mozart and Einstein immediately come to mind. To Greene, such a conception of genius is illusory. All "genius," Greene contends, is acquirable, and all masters, regardless of intrinsic ability, go through roughly the same process on their path towards mastery:

1) Finding your Life's Task. Greene argues that there's an inner force that guides you towards what you're "destined" to accomplish. Once you discover your Life's Task, throw everything at it.

2) Finding an ideal apprenticeship--the time when you hone the necessary skills and acquire the discipline vital to mastery.

3) Finding the right mentor. This is the key to a fruitful apprenticeship, enabling you to absorb the master's knowledge and power. Greene cautions that you must know when it's time to sever ties with your mentor and craft your own path in order to prevent remaining in your mentor's shadow indefinitely. The goal, Greene advises, it to eventually surpass your mentor.

4) Acquiring social intelligence. Social intelligence is an important theme in all of Greene's books. Quite simply, our personal and professional advancement will invariably stall if we don't learn to read people and deftly maneuver through the labyrinth of others' whims, passions, and ambitions.

5) "Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active." This stage involves expanding your knowledge to fields related to your craft, thereby challenging you to "make new associations between different ideas." Greene believes this is a critical step to optimizing your creative output and achieving mastery.

6) Fusing the intuitive with the rational. Greene argues that Einstein's discoveries can be as much attributed to his intuition as to his mathematical analysis grounded in pure reason. Practice and intimate knowledge of our field foster the integration of intuition with reason.

For each stage, Greene outlines concrete steps to take to achieve these goals, including approaching difficult problems from unconventional angles or altering your perspective, embracing the holistic approach--i.e. utilizing and synchronizing the full range of resources and options your environment has to offer.

One of the features that distinguishes Mastery from Greene's two other masterpieces, 33 Strategies of War and 48 Laws of Power, is its greater focus on the biographies of contemporary masters, most of whom are not well known to the general public. Greene delves into the lives of legendary masters like Mozart, Einstein, Goethe, Darwin, and da Vinci, but also of lesser known contemporary masters like software engineer and entrepreneur Paul Graham, animal scientist and inventor Temple Grandin, and linguistic archaeologist Daniel Everett, who cracked the previously thought to be indecipherable language of the reclusive Amazonian tribe, Piraha.

Linking the human capacity for mastery to our biology and indeed, metaphysics, Greene writes in a veritably spiritual manner, making Mastery highly compelling and exceedingly motivational.

The title Mastery is fitting, since Greene is undoubtedly a master in the art of strategy. It is amusing to hear some of his detractors bemoan the "amoral" nature of his books. Amoral virtues--be it courage, prudence, or temperament--are indispensable to achieving moral ends. A strategically inept well-meaning person will likely fail to achieve any significant good, because he is ill-prepared to deal with endless obstacles that stand in his way. Whereas a person well versed in the art of strategy and equipped with the amoral virtues necessary to overcome such obstacles, has the potential to achieve noble ends.

The one area where I could quibble with Greene has to do with the age old debate over the role of nature vs. nurture. Since genetic makeup is a fixed variable outside of our control, it is perhaps pointless to dwell on its role in our development when writing a book about the concrete things we can actually do to better ourselves. Still, I wonder if Greene's unequivocal dismissal of the traditional interpretation of genius as inherent isn't to some extent mistaken. Regardless of how many thousands of hours Mozart spent studying his craft, is it really conceivable that any person of sound mind and body could replicate his success?

I tend to think that there is something to be said about intrinsic genius; that there are masters who are born with an uncanny and natural ability to perceive things others do not and cannot, no matter how hard they try. Nevertheless, even if Greene errors in downplaying the role DNA plays in cultivating "genius," it in no way diminishes his strategy for acquiring mastery. Whether all of us can become the Einstein in our field makes little difference. What matters is that we can reach our maximum potential--become men and women in full--by following Greene's blueprint.

62 people found this helpful

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Great product

As expected.

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2023

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Great book.

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mikephd80

First half of the book is worth the price alone

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2014

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This is an excellent book with a treasure trove of useful guidance, but the last half of the book dragged a bit causing me to dock one star from the review. Nevertheless, the beginning of the book alone is worth the price of admission.

Greene starts out by tackling a simple, yet often overlooked concept: we each have a "life task" yet many of us deviate from this task because of pressure from family members, concerns about money, etc. We thus jump into a rat race in which we fail to make progress, ultimately finding ourselves in a job we merely tolerate and having given up on our dreams. If you are not excited to get up each morning and go to your job, then this book is for you.

Greene aptly points out that we will spend the lion's share of our waking lives at our job. That being the case, we shouldn't resign ourselves to the notion that our jobs are merely a hassle we endure to get to the weekends. Rather, we should engage in some soul-searching to find our life's task: something we are naturally inclined to do, even if we weren't being paid to do it. We are all unique, so no one can tell you your life's task. In fact, you might not even know what your life's task is, and Greene suggests re-examining activities from your childhood to find something that you never grew tired of doing.

Once you've identified what your life's task is, it's time to go after it. If you say, "Hey, I'm already in a career and have invested all this time" Greene's is that you will never be truly successful and happy by doing something that isn't your life's task. To get ahead in any field requires massive commitments of time and energy, and you seem won't have the motivation for this in the long haul if the path you've chosen isn't your life task. But once you've mustered the courage to go after this life task, Greene suggests you pick an area that roughly corresponds to this interest. This job should be viewed more as a learning experience, and as you come to know the field better you'll identify side-paths that appeal more closely to your particular interests.

After identifying your life task and jumping into a related field, the next step is to find a mentor. A good chunk of the book is dedicated toward finding the right mentor, and the information Greene provides is invaluable. Greene avoids spewing vague platitudes and gives the reader concrete direction about how to obtain a mentor, why a mentor is important, and how to interact with the mentor.

The second half of the book is where I found myself losing interest. Greene is famous for his mini-biographies of historical figures, and in his previous books he does an excellent job weaving these stories seamlessly into his life lessons. This time, however, I felt like I was reading a laundry-list of stories one after the other as I delved into the latter half of the book. I would read several pages about this person and then several pages about that person, and I wasn't quite sure what the key takeaway was. In the previous books each chapter had a clear, succinct point, but as I wound my way toward the end of Mastery I found myself struggling to remain engaged with the material. Perhaps the best way to summarize it is this: if someone were to ask me what I took away from the first half of the book, I could launch into a long, informed discussion of the salient points; but if someone were to ask me what I took away from the second half of the book, I would have to fire up my Kindle and go back to dig up something that wasn't useful enough for me to bother committing it to memory.

Other reviewers have mentioned that Greene forgoes his usual style of quotes in the margins, etc. and this is correct, but I found that to be less of an issue. Who cares what format he chooses for delivering information if the material is useful and engaging?

If you are not excited to get up and go to work tomorrow, if your job is just "so-so," if you're lacking a clear sense of purpose in your life, buy this book and take its advice seriously-- it might help you make better use of the time you have to live. If you get bored with the second half of the book, just put it down and rest easy knowing that you've identified your life task and are going after it.

28 people found this helpful

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Daniel Reidler

Ostinato Rigore -- "stubborn rigor"

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2013

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In Mastery, Robert Greene attacks the premise that geniuses are born and illustrates how masters such as Einstein, Da Vinci, and Proust, as well as non-household names such as Daniel Everett and Cesar Rodriguez are created. He portrays the hardships experienced by some of the greatest minds and explains that their work ethic, patience, and trust and faith ultimately caused them to become masters.
Greene believes in apprenticeship in three phrases: Deep Observation, Skill Acquisition, and Experimentation or independent action. During deep observation Greene advocates to “see the vision and keep working at the skills we want to gain restlessly.” He writes, “You must choose places of work and positions that offer the greatest possibilities for learning. Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come...This means that you move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you, where you will get the most objective feedback on your performance and progress. You do not choose apprenticeships that seem easy and comfortable” (55)
In acquiring skills, one will have “tacit knowledge” or “a feeling for what you are doing that is hard to put into words but easy to demonstrate in action.” (59) followed by a “Cycle of accelerated returns” similar to a positive feedback loop “…the practice becomes easier and more interesting, leading to the ability to practice for longer hours, which increases your skill level, which in turn makes practice even more interestings.” (60) Though, Greene cautions
“begin with one skill that you can master, and that serves as a foundation for acquiring others. You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that to multitask will be the death of the process.” (60)
To the student, Greene stresses developing social intelligence and avoiding political games with colleagues. He writes, “we think that what matters in the work world is gaining attention and making friends. And these misconceptions and naivete are brutally exposed in the light of the real world.” (54) Upon starting to work he explains, “If you impress people in these first months, it should be because of the seriousness of your desire to learn, not because you are trying to rise to the top before you are ready.” (57) He continues, “Understand: your work is the single greatest means at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence. By being efficient and detail oriented in what you do, you demonstrate that you are thinking of the group at large and advancing its cause. By making what you write or present clear and easy to follow, you show you care for the audience of public at a large.”
He predicts, “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” (64) “There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn.” (83)
Put simply: Design a personal vision, Observe masters and choose mentors, build your skills, experiment, fail and repeat. Ostinato Rigore -- “stubborn rigor” or “tenacious application” the phrase Da Vinci would mutter to get past all impatience. (54) Or in Hebrew Hatmadah.

I recommend this book to Students, Adults, Teens, Entrepreneurs and tag the following:Self-Help, History, Inspiring, Business, Developing Skills, Genius, Work Ethic. Hope you enjoy!

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Thomas E. Speaker

Mastery is Robert Greene's most essential work

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2012

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Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is his most notorious work, so blatantly amoral that many of its adherents are rumored to hide in the closet. But since its publication, his work has gradually taken a moral turn. In his follow-up, The Art of Seduction, Greene mentions having compassion for one’s “victim”—he or she being seduced. The 33 Strategies of War instructs readers that there is no moral value in ignoring certain strategies. In Mastery, which concerns the pursuit of virtuosity in one’s field (and, according to Greene, ends the journey that began with 48 Laws), Greene finally mentions the value of a “great contribution to society.” Elevating this brand of altruism over self-aggrandizement, the book becomes his most essential work.

Greene’s format hasn’t changed much. He details six steps to Mastery, typically beginning chapters with an anecdote from history about a Master—the first here being Leonardo Da Vinci (who, with his diverse career, was a wise choice). Then he moves through gorgeous passages on figures such as the Wright Brothers or Albert Einstein, concluding with Goethe’s life story. What separates Mastery from the rest of his oeuvre is that Greene’s emphasis on his subject’s importance in the 21st century forces readers to play close attention.

Consider The Art of Seduction. After finishing, a reader will watch a flirtatious couple and think to herself, “They’re doing it all wrong.” Thus her worldview has been changed forever. Still, the book is targeted at those who can tolerate seeing life as a stage, and most people would prefer their own version of reality. In Mastery’s case, Greene clearly believes it crucial that we all become Masters of our skills for our planet’s future. Thus after we read the stories, we are locked in to his deconstructions. Here Greene actually makes the same case for the seductive lifestyle, but this time it is gravely serious instead of guiltily pleasing.

Few will find the book inaccessible—Greene covers virtually every possible field and often includes the connections between them, such as Yoky Mastuoka’s work on robotics and tennis. Some might raise eyebrows when told that in childhood their career field was clear to them, but Greene compensates with a “reversal” addressed to those who lacked such direction, or, later, to those without the capacity for social intelligence. Rarely is Greene blunt about the specific issues facing our age, but parsing his implications can be its own adventure—is he speaking of hipsters in describing the ironic attitude? Does he believe, like Goethe foretold, that our information overload is leading to cultural decay?

The flaws in Greene’s prose haven’t changed. He overuses “Understand” and “Think of this way:.” The problem with such repetitive phrasing is that just having read it in the last chapter, our brains are inclined to think we’ve read what follows this before, and so we skim. Furthermore, the length can be trying, and one wonders about the necessity of eight or nine stories for one of Greene’s steps—the constant shifting of setting and characters can render some sections hard to focus on, and even harder to recall.

Yet, as with his previous work, there is a method here, and it works in the book’s favor. Greene is not David Foster Wallace, nor does he wish to be—he includes just enough SAT words to read as authoritative but layman-friendly. And the aim of the over-length is to upload his ideas into the reader’s mind so that we ruminate sufficiently. In our attention-deficit culture, concision can be frivolous. Hence Greene’s loquacity might be precisely what will have Masters mentioning his book as an influence 10 to 20 years from now, and this time out of the closet.

Rating: A-

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Nancyhua

worth it

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2013

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Many popular nonfiction books leave me impressed with how they've managed to bloat 50 pages of research into a 300-page marshmallow, but Robert Greene never does that- he takes his writing seriously and views himself as aiming towards mastery as a scholar of human history and nature. I've read all of Greene's stuff and enjoy his ability to catalogue biographies of many notable historical figures, generating cohesive narratives out of people's haphazard lives, always including a "reversal" that depicts the opposite of what he'd just been pontificating about. At times the people he chooses to profile are surprising- I don't know if he came up with the categories first and then selected people who best illustrated each idea or came up with the categories after researching a wide variety- hopefully the latter.

In Mastery, the idea I considered most original was Greene's explicit mention of social intelligence as an element towards mastery- I don't think I've seen that emphasized in books that aren't explicitly on leadership, although maybe it's an obvious idea in retrospect. Objectively viewing people like an anthropologist allows you to understand the dynamics of the system to navigate it more easily without growing disillusioned or upset. See yourself as others see you and see others as they truly are: "Although it is natural to have [a naive] perspective because of ... our childhood, it is also dangerous because it envelops us in childish illusions about people, distorting our view of them... In the work environment the stakes are suddenly raised. People are no longer struggling for good grades or social approval, but for survival... You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary...Resist the temptation to interpret what they say or do as somehow implicitly involving you... In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture... All of us have foolish sides, moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or short-term goals. It is human nature... avoid the madness of trying to change them."

On the creative process: "The first step is to widen your search as far as possible. In the research stage of your project, you look at more than what is generally required. You expand your search into other fields, reading and absorbing any related information. If you have a particular theory or hypothesis about a phenomenon, you examine as many examples and potential counterexamples as humanly possible... Anomalies themselves contain the richest information... We can only keep in mind several pieces of information at the same time. Through an image we can simultaneously imagine many things at once, at a glance. Words also are abstract; an image or model makes our idea suddenly more concrete, which satisfies our need to see and feel things with our senses... which will help you organize masses of information and add new dimensions to your concept."

The steps towards mastery begin with passive observation, then acquiring skills, then apprenticeship, generally under a mentor whom you must surpass, then experimentation. All of Greene's works emphasize embracing reality over one's internal fantasies, obsessions, and other biases, so Greene's stuff could be categorized as rationalist literature. It is also motivational, revealing his philosophy regarding the meaning of life: "Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future."

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James E. Barrick, Ph.D.

Finding the Master Within You

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2012

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Seldom have I had the pleasure of finding and reading such an insightful book. The three sections in the Introduction, "The Ultimate Power; The Evolution of Mastery; and The Keys to Mastery" cogently outline the direction the author intends to take us.

The reader is advised that it is a mistake to consider this to be a book of pithy sayings and homilies. Nothing could be further from the truth. In essence, this book is a roadmap for the common person to explore himself, or herself, and to look deeply into the lives of such masters as: Leonardo da Vinci, Alfred Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Buckminster Fuller, Benjamin Franklin, Martha Graham, Charles Darwin, Henry Ford, John Keats, Michael Faraday, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carl Jung, Glenn Gould, William Harvey, Richard Wagner, Marcel Proust, Wilbur and Orville Wright, among others, for lessons learned and mistakes to avoid.

Each of the six main sections of the book utilized the same structure: the topic, followed by a brief biography of acknowledged masters, and a discussion of the "Keys to Mastery."
Section 1, "Discover Your Calling" suggests everyone has a unique gift to offer the world, details how Leonardo da Vinci found his, and follows it with the "Keys to Mastery," and strategies for finding your life's task.
Each succeeding section uses the same outline, e.g., what you need to master a part of your life, how a master did it, and strategies to emulate toward your own mastery.

I found section 5 in section 6 to be a most useful exploration of the topics of the creative (emotional) mind and the cognitive (rational) mind. Much of my 34 year career as a psychologist has focused on assisting patients to find a balance between their emotional and their rational minds. Patients whose emotions rule their lives frequently make decisions that are not in their best interest. Assisting them to evaluate their situations by using their rational mind allows them to acknowledge their feelings, yet make rational decisions that have a better chance of succeeding. Patients whose rationality rules their lives frequently make decisions that ignore giving credence to their emotions. Assisting them to incorporate the legitimacy of their feelings allows them to become more fully a human being. Even Star Trek's Mr. Spock had his emotional moments.

To put it into more historical perspectives, René DesCartes's (1596-1650) conjecture that "Cogito Ergo Sum," translated as "I think, therefore I am," was, in my opinion, only half right. For example, if I pinch your arm really hard, are you going to have to think to know you're alive? Or is it equally valid to say "I feel, therefore I am?" Similarly, Aristotle (384-322), in creating the taxonomy of animal species, said, "Man is the rational animal." Personally, I think Aristotle had it backward. "Man is not the rational animal," it seems to me that "Man is the animal that rationalizes." We do what we feel like doing, then we come up with reasons to justify having done it. One cannot ignore either mind at the expense of the other, in either direction.

Robert Greene's book, Mastery, is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying, which, I surmise, is what he intended. Therefore, I highly recommend this book to anyone.

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