Asshole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone & How You Can, Too

Asshole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone & How You Can, Too | Martin Kihn | A great 'feel good' read

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Asshole: How I Got...

	Asshole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone & How You Can, Too Martin Kihn Broadway, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nice guys, pushovers, soft-touches and suckers:

Tired of being walked all over?
When the waiter brings you something you didn?t order, do you assume he knows best?
Are you ready to demand the respect you deserve?

Martin Kihn doesn?t care what your answers are, because of course you need this book. Watch and learn as this one-time softy transforms himself into a lean, mean a-hole machine.

Go with your gut instinct - be like Donald Trump!

"Go with your gut instinct. Have an ego. There's nothing wrong with ego."

One look at the title of Martin Kihn's book A@@hole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a D@mn About Anyone & How You Can, Too is enough to make some people just pass it by, others to grab it just because of the scatological term in the title, and still others to pick up just wondering what the hell it was all about. I'm in that last category (and please note that the title of this book cannot be used in this review).

Didn't know if this was going to be an arrogant statement from a megalomaniac, a Trump-wannabe or a witty satire, but within fifteen minutes I was thinking of some combination of Walter Mitty and the original Underdog cartoon series. It's profane at times, and can be outright vulgar as well, but for some reason it seems to fit this book and its message.

All you nice guys, pushovers, soft-touches and suckers: are you fed up with being walked all over, tired of having the beach bully kick sand in your face like in the old Charles Atlas cartoon advertisements from comic books and magazines? Are you now "ready to demand the respect you deserve?"

Author Martin Kihn really doesn't care what your answers are, because (of course) you need this book. Read it and you'll learn how he was the proverbial nice guy, walking other people's dogs, going out of his way to fetch complicated lunch orders for associates and doling out money to any charity or sales scam asked for it. The result of these nice-guy actions was a dead-end job and a second-rate apartment.

So he decided to make some changes, picking up tips from the winners, the masters that he had observed. He paid close attention to the worst examples that he could find at his work, in the street and on television, and then copied their behavior. Kihn studied Tony Montana's body language from the film Scarface and was motivated by such people as the people who attend National Rifle Association conventions, and even signed with the NRA. He started kickboxing, screamed at colleagues at work and ate garlic bagels on public transportation. He was further inspired by a man in his building with a tattooed face, and of course by the master himself, Donald J. Trump.

In this book, Kihn lists a 10-step program for anyone those who wish to acquaint themselves with their darker side. It tells you all of the necessary steps to worsen yourself, yet it's sort of refreshing in that it offers an antidote to those simpering self-help books about making a better person of yourself.

Don't want to put a spoiler here, so I'll just say that Kihn claimed that his project led him on "a voyage of months which succeeded beyond my wildest dreams".

Martin Kihn's Ten Step ####### Program:

* Fake it `til you make it
* Find a@@h@le role models
* Hire a life coach
* Become the alpha dog
* Be a fighter, not a lover
* Show no interest in others
* Criticise in public, praise in private
* Keep your eyes on the prize
* Never, ever admit a mistake
* Leap before you look

It's worth noting out that Martin Kihn also wrote an excellent comedy exposé on the world of management consultancy called House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, and received an Emmy Award nomination for his writing on MTV's Pop-Up Video. You may not like him after you've finished this book, but there are parts that will make you smile, and possibly think of a few people who should read it, if just for the tips that he offers.

Kihn's ironic take on what it takes to be successful offers a number of belly laughs. He's a funny man, maybe even a true comedic genius. It make one wonder what the result would be if he were to team up with the likes of a Mel Brooks to produce and/or direct a movie. Even a script draft would be hilarious from such a combination.

Let's just say that this is a great parody, and Martin Kihn is a better read than Donald Trump. See for yourself.

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A great 'feel good' read

This book is just plain fun. From the title, you may get the wrong impression but I can tell you, it'd be really hard to read this book and not really sympathize with the author.

Basically, he's a little bit of all of us. He's a down to Earth guy who plays by the rules and has a good heart. Even when he outlines his rules of being an ahole, he won't for instance cheat on his wife. He says it's because he's afraid of retaliation, but read through the book and you'll no doubt see that's not the case at all - he truly loves his wife and considers her his closest friend. But such sentiment doesn't jibe with the image of being an ahole that he's trying to create.

Going through the book, you find a guy that loves his wife, loves dogs, cares about the 'little' people, and constantly goes out of his way to be a decent human being. He mentions this as proof of how he always gets pushed around and beaten down, but his 'miserable' life is one that few people could keep from envying (Loving attractive wife, Vice President of his company, liked by all of his employees, a really awesome dog etc etc)

The jerks in the book that he aspires to become are so utterly loathsome (As bad as "Nemisis" is, the short bald guy in the rental care line is the worst) that it's clear he could never truly be like any of them. But as he transforms, he really is funny and entertaining.

And even after he becomes a full fledged ahole, well, I don't think it really worked. It's a really funny book and one that I think pretty much anyone can relate to. Throughout it, he's showing that even though aholes seem to win so often, they really don't.

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Quick and Easy (Just How I Like it)

It's short, hilarious, and entertaining. If you enjoyed Tucker Max's "Beer in Hell" this should be a good supplement.

It's a parody, not a scientific essay

This book isn't what I expected. I've read all of the how-to-deal-with-a-corporate-bully books. This time, I wanted one written by a bully to see how they think and why they bully nice people like me. This is a humorous, part fiction, part embellishment, part real life, part movie script parody of a "nice guy" worker trying to climb the corporate ladder while the "mean guy" steps all over him and gets ahead. The "nice guy" studies the "mean guy's" habits which seem to work at putting him higher on the corporate ladder while the "nice guy" is left behind. The "nice guy" adopts the "mean guy's" habits through various means which is pretty funny. Once I figured out that it wasn't what I wanted, I kept reading anyway because it was a good laugh. As an aside, my husband is kind of a "mean guy" at work and sometimes at home. I work with him, so I know that he is mean at work. I was laughing out loud as we were taking a long road trip, so I started reading him a passage from the book on how "mean guys" interrupt and talk over people to gain control of a conversation. Before I could get to the second paragraph about interrupting, my husband interrupted me and yelled, "How long is this going to take? I really don't like the title of that book. It offends me, blah, blah, blah." When he finally finished, I explained that it's only two paragraphs and it was funny and I asked if I could continue. He agreed, so I continued reading the passage when he interrupted me again, this time louder to tell me he interrupts me because I never get to the point. I repeated I had only one sentence left to read of the two paragraphs. He sighed and let me continue. Then I finally got to the part about a "real mean guy" interrupts constantly and gets louder with each interruption. He then yelled, "The reason I interrupt is because I don't like you holding me hostage while you read me this (expletive deleted)." I looked at him and said, "I'm right here, you don't need to yell. We haven't spoken for the first 100 miles of this trip and we have 200 more to go. How am I holding you hostage? Do you have somewhere else to go outside of this car in the next 30 seconds?" He recognized himself as what he is. Hmmmmmmmmm. We both had a good laugh. If you want a "scientific" book on why mean people are the way they are and what you can do about it, read "Taming the Abrasive Manager" by Laura Crawshaw.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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