Confucius – The Analects – book review

In a nutshell (249 pages), this is a severely misunderstood book about leading yourself. The central tenet of the book is that if you can’t rule yourself, you can’t rule your family if you can’t rule your family, you can’t rule your village or town, if you can’t rule your village or town, you can’t rule the nation. When he talks about ruling over this or that he doesn’t mean as a tyrant, he means to manage and help to become more.

What I got out of it

There is so much good advice for anyone, not just a parent, business leader, mayor, premiere, senator, prime minister, president, etc. The advice comes down to the individual. A lot of the ideas in the book will be recognizable from other times in history, schools of thought, whatever.

What was difficult

It's bite-sized information and each one starts with so-and-so says/said/wondered such and such. Not all of them are clearly beneficial. It’s taken as a whole that this book is beneficial.

Recommendation

If you can’t get past the cheap sitcom jokes about “Confucius says:” then you may not be ready to read this book. If you want to know why the 2,500-year-old writings of Confucius still grip leaders and academics to this day, then get yourself a copy.