I’ve often encountered 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene being cited as a red flag – “ladies, if your man claims that 48 Laws is his favorite book, run away” – that sort of thing. I… can understand why people might say that. But at the same time, it’s a book that changed my life for the better. Before I read this book, I used to bungle a lot of my social relations with people. I would openly criticize people, thinking that that meant I was being honest, which is a good thing, right? Turns out social reality is more complicated than that, and 48LOP was the book that helped me to see it.

I’ve re-read this book several times over the years. It’s interesting – the first time I read it, I was about 20 and I had very little power in my own life. At my most recent re-read, I’m 30, and I now do have a moderate amount of power in my life. And I feel that this book has given me some tools and perspectives to teach me to handle that power with grace and responsibility, to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes for the majority of people that I’ve interacted with.

I wouldn’t recommend this book in isolation unless I know the person I’m talking to. I would want to also recommend some other books that I think would encourage people to cultivate love and kindness and decency. I never quite found one single book that captures it all the way I want to, so I wrote one myself, and you can get that here.