I should start by admitting that I haven't read the whole book - just a few chapters while browsing in the bookshop for Christmas gifts (obviously that was one I didn't buy). It was certainly readable and interesting but, as I think others have also said, he seemed to me a bestseller writer than serious thinker. So many anecdotes, so many sweeping generalisations, unexplored assumptions and arguments full of holes (in the parts of the book that I read, anyway wink ). On the other hand, perhaps we smug first worlders really are about to be knocked off our perches by a tide of offspring of subsistence farmers from China. I suppose the African ones don't work quite hard enough, or was it covered in a chapter I didnt' get to? Which might also have dwelt a little on what success means, and to who? Did health and happiness get a mention anywhere? Or contribution to the greater good etc? Well, perhaps they did, and I'll try to keep an open mind pending the time I get around to reading the rest.

BTW Austin - I'm not from any of the backgrounds you mention, but seem to have managed a pretty good work ethic nonetheless. Would you go to the extreme of leaving me off a shortlist in favour of others based on assumptions re our backgrounds (all other things being equal)?