How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis

How to get rich books are rarely written by people who have got rich.  When they are, it is usually because they have got rich by selling books about getting rich.  (A similar principle is at work in people who sell products related to personal development.)   This book is unusual in having been written by a man who has indeed become fabulously rich, and has done so by starting and building businesses.  People in Britain might well have heard of him and will have quite likely have bought products that one of his company's has made.  So the eye catching title  has something behind it.

And it does indeed tell you how to get rich.  So what is the catch?  It turns out that the secret to getting rich is working obsessively hard, ignoring any other objective and never giving up.  If you are prepared to do that there are some handy tips here about some of the problems you will meet along the way.  For any aspiring tycoon I would imagine that there will be something in this account that will at least repay the cover price.

But the real lesson is to see the world as it really is.  This isn't actually a self help book or a guide to action.  It can just about function as one if that is what you want to take away from it, and it is probably a sight better than most of them.  But it is really an autobiography.  And it is a real autobiography actually written by the man himself.  As such it is an interesting insight into a rather extreme personality.  He has done what he set out to do and become fabulously rich.   It doesn't seem to have made him particularly happy.  He might have done better to have become a poet - he gives us some samples of his poetry and they aren't at all bad.

He has gone after what he wanted and he has got it.  He gives us enough of his path to share the triumph.  And along the way you get to like him a lot.  He is witty, resourceful and has a sort of integrity though maybe not the sort you would actually want to brag about.   But when I finally put it down after finishing it, it was hard to put it down before that, I felt more sympathy than envy or admiration.  When he finally realised he had achieved his dream I have a feeling it wasn't quite what he had in mind.