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The Laws of Human Nature
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you. This is the only authorized paperback edition in the US. Robert Greene is…
- Release Date
- 2019
- Length
- 625 pages
- Publisher
- Penguin
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Our Review
About the book
Robert Greene identifies eighteen recurring patterns in human behavior, such as envy, grandiosity, irrationality and short-term thinking, and pairs each with historical case studies. The aim is to help readers recognize these forces in others and in themselves.
Our review
Greene turns his historian’s eye inward, and the result is his most self-reflective book, if also his most bloated.
Where his earlier books mostly teach you to spot and outmaneuver other people, this one keeps pointing the mirror back at the reader. Chapters on envy, self-absorption and the dark side we hide from ourselves are provocative, and Greene’s case studies, ranging from ancient Athens to the twentieth century, are told with a novelist’s sense of pacing. When a chapter lands, it reads like a sharp conversation with someone who has read everything.
The trouble is scale. At over six hundred pages, the book repeats its points and stretches anecdotes to fit theses they only partly support. Greene writes about psychology with great confidence and fairly little contact with actual research, so treat his laws as essays rather than findings. Readers who enjoy his grand, aphoristic style will be happy for weeks. Others may wish an editor had cut it in half and kept the best eight chapters.
What we loved
- More introspective and humane than Greene’s power books
- Vivid historical case studies told with real narrative craft
- Chapters work well as standalone essays
Keep in mind
- Very long and noticeably repetitive
- Sweeping claims about psychology with little scientific grounding
Read it if you like
Readers of The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, or fans of Ryan Holiday’s history-driven self-help.
The verdict
Thought-provoking and often wise, but best read slowly, a chapter at a time, with a skeptical pencil in hand.
