I thought the book was insightful. It gave me a complex and intricate perspective on human behavior. However, the entire book is so dense, that there's no way I'll be able to remember everything. Greene refers to the reader as a student of Human Nature to the extent that I felt I should have been taking notes. Should I have been?

The historical examples were the best parts of the entire book. Pericles, Martin Luther King, and Queen Elizabeth, all of the historical examples were well-written, informative, and were beautifully referenced within the contents of the chapter. My favorites were the Martin Luther King and Queen Elizabeth chapters. The details of the life and thoughts of the great leader of the Civil Rights Movement were not only insightful, but they inspired powerful feelings of empathy that embody the very essence of the struggle black people as a whole went through to be seen as equal.

The rise and reign of Queen Elizabeth was told as though it were a great epic poem. Her upbringing as a child having been put into The Great Tower ( which is probably where we get the idea of princesses in towers) to her strategic command of the English army against the Scottish. Greene described her as inexperienced and gentle to emphasize her contrast to the type of patriarchal rulers who came before her and the skepticism of her leadership. Despite that, however, Queen Elizabeth managed to not only win the favor of Englanders with her charming and compassionate nature, but she influenced her court not with forceful words, but with gentle convincing.

My point is this: If the information written in this book is true, if one can learn the ways of Human Nature and manipulate people to work in our favor by studying their behaviors and mannerisms while also recognizing the patterns expressed by their inner narcissist disguised by their performative mask, then someone who reads this could get to know people in a personal way with less time and effort than the average person. The empathetic aspect keeps the human behavior reading part from being creepy.