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Why Smart People Do Dumb Things: The…
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Why Smart People Do Dumb Things: The Greatest Business Blunders - How They Happened, and How They Could Have Been Prevented (edition 1995)

by Mortimer Feinberg

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351692,677 (3.25)None
Why do smart people do dumb things? Hubris. A sense of entitlement. The feeling that "things will be different for me," even if they've watched a hundred people go down for the fall before them. Narcissism. And of course, plain old stupidity.

Feinberg and Tarrant use real examples from business and politics to show that not only can it happen to you, it already has to lots of other people. What makes the book doubly interesting, though, is that many of the people who looked like hopeless SCIPIs when the book was written in 1995 (SCIPI stands for "superior cognitive possessing intelligence possessing individual, a.k.a. the smart people who mess up) have come back from their errors and once again have prominent and respected positions in the country. And considering what has passed in the 15 years since the book was written, the follies of many of the others don't look nearly as serious in retrospect.

The beginning of the book details the hubris, narcissism, and other flaws which cause people to fail; the final part of the book is an instruction set on how not to let this happen to you. If some of the authors' points seem obvious, it's only because the premise of the book is that potential flame-outs have drifted so far away from reality that they need a good common sense talking-to.

The book is interesting, an easy read, and a trip down memory lane for anyone old enough to remember the foibles of Gary Hart, Leona Helmsley, New York Judge Sol Wachtler, and Margaret Thatcher. It's a good wake-up call for anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a "position of power" in their work or social life. Worth picking up. ( )
  OliviainNJ | Aug 30, 2010 |
Why do smart people do dumb things? Hubris. A sense of entitlement. The feeling that "things will be different for me," even if they've watched a hundred people go down for the fall before them. Narcissism. And of course, plain old stupidity.

Feinberg and Tarrant use real examples from business and politics to show that not only can it happen to you, it already has to lots of other people. What makes the book doubly interesting, though, is that many of the people who looked like hopeless SCIPIs when the book was written in 1995 (SCIPI stands for "superior cognitive possessing intelligence possessing individual, a.k.a. the smart people who mess up) have come back from their errors and once again have prominent and respected positions in the country. And considering what has passed in the 15 years since the book was written, the follies of many of the others don't look nearly as serious in retrospect.

The beginning of the book details the hubris, narcissism, and other flaws which cause people to fail; the final part of the book is an instruction set on how not to let this happen to you. If some of the authors' points seem obvious, it's only because the premise of the book is that potential flame-outs have drifted so far away from reality that they need a good common sense talking-to.

The book is interesting, an easy read, and a trip down memory lane for anyone old enough to remember the foibles of Gary Hart, Leona Helmsley, New York Judge Sol Wachtler, and Margaret Thatcher. It's a good wake-up call for anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a "position of power" in their work or social life. Worth picking up. ( )
  OliviainNJ | Aug 30, 2010 |

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