PaperbackThere is no reason that this needed to be a full-length book (nor, I would argue, did it need to written in any form -- but that's beside the point). The "information" contained in these pages could have easily been reduced to the length of a high school science project: 20 pages of double spacing with foot and endnotes would've been more than enough to get his "point" across. Wiseman repeats himself so often and pats himself on the back for the "results" he "uncovers" during his "research" that, by the end of the thing (OK -- I'll admit it -- by the 30th page of the thing) I thought he was a complete tool.
The summary of the book is that people might label themselves as lucky or unlucky, but good fortune is the result of perspective and effort rather than fate. Too bad Wiseman isn't brave enough (or smart enough?) to say that outright. He instead talks about changing the "luck" from bad to good -- only he does it without the quotation marks.
Another thing that drove me up the wall is that he often would describe an experiment and then draw conclusions from it that were either a questionable interpretation of the results or, in one blatant example, a complete fabrication. I won't bore you with all the particulars (it's the newspaper one on pages 44-48 of the 2003 paperback pictured above, if you want to check it out yourself), but he basically says "everyone who participated in this experiment [both lucky AND unlucky] missed the big picture; everyone failed to notice two amazing opportunities." But, when he refers to the experiment, he says that lucky people are the ones who notice the opportunities in the newspaper. He cites his experiment as proof, despite the fact that it disproved his theory.
I don't hate the idea of the book -- I agree completely that luck is made, not sprinkled about arbitrarily -- but it's so sloppy and self-congratulatory that an author with the title "Dr." should be downright ashamed of himself.
D+
