Two clunkers from Vermillion:

How to be Rich, edited by Patricia G Horan

The 7 Secrets of Leadership Success,
Deborah Tom & General Richard Barrons

9780091924041
9780091906931

Where to begin? With the first book, I guess. Subtitled ‘Collected wisdom from the world’s greatest thinkers’ this is not a distillation of Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Hawkins. No, between these covers we hear from the likes of Wallace Wattles, Theron Q Dumont, Orion S Marden and Ralph Waldo Trine. And frankly I doubt that we even get the best work of these obscure ‘thinkers’.

‘How to be Rich’ smacks of the worst sort of opportunism. I’m sure Ms Horan did not deliberately seek out a bunch of out of copyright works to compile her book from, but it is difficult to come up with a more convincing theory.

And so to ‘The 7 Secrets of Leadership Success’. Why is it always 7? We know authors make up these lists so why not be a bit original and have 5; or 9; or (bit radical this) an even number of secrets!?

But 7 it is and despite using up almost four hundred pages I can find nothing new here. The same old ideas rejigged and retitled with a few militaristic words and analogies thrown in. Sadly even these latter are pretty boring.

So, as I said at the start, a couple of real clunkers – don’t waste your money.