A display of a mastery - the rigorous long hours of immersive practice, the ability to delve into the minute details, the ability to interconnect the overwhelming details into a big picture - has always been attractive to me all my life. I remember how attracted I was a kid to the kungfu films, which, in hindsight, was not only about the battle scenes, but mostly the practice scenes that amused me. The transformation from the normal or even the weak into the masterful champion. And I tend to gravitate to those values in the rest of my life. How I see virtousic guitarists like Steve Vai and Guthrie Govan etc whose life snippets are mostly available in modern media. I am not only enchanted by the result of their work, but also to their approach to gain the mastery. Musicianship and guitardom are just an example. Many other examples such as authorship - see how Orhan Pamuk collected objects to create his novel Museum of Innocence, martial arts, even the art of Japanese tea ceremony. In short a success for me is in the form of mastery. This book gives such an elaboration of mastery in different fields. It dissects the examples and presents them in the way the old kungfu movies showed the practice scenes, which is really attractive to me. It also tries to extract principles and explains it a Machiavellian way. Although, less attractive, but it has not succumbed to the generalisations suffered by most self help books. All in all an inspiring book. Mastery is a book of intense research by Robert Greene and he represents startling facts about humans that we are all the same. It our intense focus and practise that creates masters and geniuses in the world. I enjoyed reading a lot except VS Ramachandran's part because it was too scientific, though I am an engineer :PMust read for people who strongly desire to stand out from the crowd. Don't read it when you are part of the crowd.. must read when you know you are different! Or you are on the path.
What do You think about Mastery (2012)?
did not like the style or the ideas.There are better and more inspiring books available.
—Brooke
nicely written and engaging - makes me calm and enthusiastic at the same time
—ferraricastro
