Curzon is shocked to recommend The 50th Law:
At first glance, the book looks like a practical joke or an act of tremendous chutzpah. The cover is made of imitation leather, embossed with gold lettering in a thick Gothic font, sporting pages that are edged with gold like a Holy Bible found in a church pew. The book is unreal in its confidence — co-authors Robert Greene and 50 Cent review the lessons taught by history’s great thinkers and leaders — Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Lincoln, Clausewitz, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and many more — and then apply those lessons… to the life of 50 Cent! Can you think of anything more audacious?
The book opens with Robert Greene, who has authored books that are somewhat like the self-help version of Robert D. Kaplan’s Warrior Politics, explaining how Greene met 50 Cent in 2007 and was enthralled that, despite having no academic education, he instinctively understood the laws of power that Greene had been trying to teach in his books such as The 48 Laws of Power. He then tells how he spent a year with 50 Cent, witnessing him in action as he ran his music business and career as a performer, and wrote the book using the inspiration of 50 Cent’s career success, concluding that the famous rapper has something extra, a panache that Greene did not cover in his book on the 48 laws — fearlessness.That is the key theme of the book — the dehabilitating nature of fear and the importance of overcoming it in order to succeed. Fearlessness allow a person to take advantages of opportunities and rise to challenges by taking initiative. It’s hard — fear is the most primitive and basic human emotion — but as Greene wrote in his blog post:
The truth is that a fearless approach is the necessary starting point of almost any successful or creative action in this world. The 50th is in fact the ultimate law of power, the key to the castle.Greene met and spent time with 50 Cent well before the rapper’s success as one of the richest hip-hop artists was recognized by Forbes magazine and his financial success became open public knowledge.
I am almost shocked to find myself writing that I strong recommend this book. Greene trumpets the values of realism and dismisses idealism, praises the benefits of adversity, the importance of innovation over tradition, and the book really does have the readability of Robert D. Kaplan’s writings and quickly draw you in to believing the material. Like Kaplan, it applies the laws of the ancients to very modern situations that make the material easy to grasp and understand. It is also jaw-droppingly audacious — Greene writes that, “Fifty could serve as my Cesare Borgia, and I as his Machiavelli.”
The problem with fearlessness is that some get rich, and some die tryin’.