Review: Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

by Eric Baker

Barking Up the Wrong Tree:
The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything
You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

For a book that claims to be surprising, there wasn't much new here. I'll say this, it is entertaining and he does tell a good story. The most surprising part of the book was the examples he chose for you to emulate - pirates, gang members, and raccoons for example. There are good tips here and I especially liked the stuff on work-life balance. To give you context, I am back in college after many years away and so thoughts of my future and what I want to do with it are looming large and I am fascinated by any book that purports to tell me how to proceed.

This book doesn't fail to do that, it just wasn't as surprising as it advertised itself to be. Maybe if they hadn't oversold it so heavily it would have felt more suprising than it actually was. Was it useful? I think so. Did it bring anything new or different to the table? Well, the writing style was fresh and the examples were clever, but I'm not sure I learned anything I didn't already know. Was it worth the read? For me it was, but I'm a sucker for all things psychology. If you're not as fascinated as I am by psychology, maybe it won't be as much fun for you.

I will say that I'm sick to death of titles that read like a prologue. Seriously, how many words does one title really need? In this case it actually set the book up for failure since it couldn't deliver on the promise.

I give it three and a half stars from an ex psychology major but your mileage may differ.