I have been a reader of Steve Pavlina's blog and was really impressed by the quality of some of his articles on the blog. Therefore, I was very excited when I came to know about his book. Unfortunately, the book is an unmitigated disappointment.

The author has tried hard to tie various component of personal development into three universal principles that can be applied to any situation. Unfortunately human personality is a much more nuanced thing that defies such neat categorizations. The attempt to force fit the 'fundamental principles of personal development(!)' into neat categories can only result in such inanities as love + truth = oneness; truth + power = courage; etc. There is no explanation on why only these categories are considered universal, why not others? After all we have a long list of desirable qualities say virtue, honor, commitment, persistence, discipline etc. etc. On what basis do you pick 3 of them and declare them to be 'fundamental principles'? If truth, love and power are the fundamental principals of personality, then what about the others? The author believes that others are just a combination of these 3. So,

Oneness= Truth + Love
Courage= Love + Power
Authority= Truth + Power
Intelligence= Truth + Love + Power

I am not sure if this is an exhaustive list of all desirable personality traits. May be other things can also be derived from fundamental principles in some different combination. May be further research can show that "commitment = 2/5* power + 1/3* love" or something like that. I don't know.

The point is that there is no scientific basis for claiming that truth, power and love are the basic three principles and others are just a combination of them. There are no hypothesis, no tests, no analysis and no proofs. No reference to any studies in any university of repute. No double blind tests on sample population. Just results. Whatever author says is a revelation that does not require any external validation. His assertion is enough since it is based on his personal experience. Believe it and you will see the results.

My second complain is that the style is very boring and the book is unnecessarily lengthy. Probably, it is because the author has tried to fit in everything in the same structure: Principles-> components-> blocks to principles and -> how to improve on it. Therefore even when no further elaboration is needed on a point, the author is tempted to add his 'two words' on it. The entire content of the book can be summarized in just couple of pages without loss of any information. In fact the first 5 star review on Amazon has all the information that you will get from the book (except for the equations: love + power = courage etc.)

Finally, this book proves that a blog and a book are two entirely different mediums. Something that may pass as intelligent and thought provoking on a blog may not necessarily cross the bar in a book form where readers are accustomed to see more rigor.

Bottom line is that this book is a boring compilation of author's personal opinions on personal development, some of which may be true; others may not, since there is no evidence either way except author's own assertions. If you think that one data point is large enough sample to draw conclusions and put your efforts to see if it works for you, then go ahead and buy this book.