"The Rich Jerk"

No author! It is an ebook, one of the thousands 'get rich on the internet' ebooks, most of which are pure garbage, however this one came recommended by a friend, and it actually contains some valuable insights. This book won't bore you with the history of the internet, bunch of irrelevant statistics and general material you can find all over the web. This book is about the author's experience with making money off the internet, mostly through affiliate marketing schemes and promoting your own information product.

One of the strongest points the author makes is that the easiest thing to sell on the internet is information. You don't have to stock the product, manage inventory, returns, packaging, etc. Ebooks can be emailed, downloaded, and propagated at near zero cost. Another great point the author makes is how to construct an affiliate marketing web site by simultaneously using Google adsense and adwords at the same time, thus while investing some money, getting much bigger return on the investment.

Further the book explains how to create proxy search sites to drive traffic to your marketing site and how to avoid punishment from the search engines (read: Google) for doing that. There are plenty of good tips and insights into the psychology of the internet shopper, and best ways to maximize your sales and profits. It is obvious that the author is not very technical (if at all) and he recommends all kinds of software for creating your web site without any knowledge (even his own company offers such services), and no doubt he has profit sharing setup with all the sites and software makers he recommends, as he instructs people to do in his book.

Although it is hard to buy the claim that the author made millions with the methods he described in the book, it is conceivable that with large amount of time allotted and some luck and initial investment (nothing comes free!), a decent income can be obtained using the methods described in the book.

"The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck

I had very high expectations for this book, and I kept postponing reading it for the time when I would have the 'enough free time to properly devote to it.' Similar cases in the past have ended with my being quite disappointed in the actual book, not that much because the book was so bad, but because my expectations were so built up, as if expecting a miracle. Well, in life, usually there are no miracles.

The book is quite good actually. There are four parts "Discipline", "Love", "Growth and Religion" and "Grace", and they decline in quality in that order. The "Discipline" part is probably the best and correctly points out that "Life is Difficult" and we have to be disciplined to cope with it, having control of our urges and vices and grooming ourselves to be the best human beings we can possibly be. The part about "Love" is less original, but peppered with many stories from Peck's patients which keep the attention of the reader and illustrate the points well. In "Growth and Religion" part things start becoming confusing. Though starting with a Buddhist thought, and encouraging the reader to explore paradigms outside of "the religion of your parents" this part sounds a lot like evangelical preaching about how Christianity is the best religion after all. The last part "Grace" is the most confusing, and consists much of exalting the psychotherapist as some kind of demigod, who is sacrificing his time and life only to help the humanity. Pretty megalomaniac.

The book was first published in 1978, but was virtually unknown until the mid 80s, so although it tries to reconcile the movements of the 70s with modern psychology and science, it mostly exemplifies the zeitgeist of the 80s, with its new approaches to the old things and all-encompassing optimism and hope for the present and the future. Much of what is said is neither new or groundbreaking today, but it must have been quite a shock to 1978. Some things are still shocking today, like Peck recommending (and even admitting) sexual relationships between the psychoanalyst and the (female) patients. This is allegedly the reason his wife of 40 years divorced him. Also it is a reason I always choose female psychotherapists :)

All in all, interesting motivational book, not much new to learn, but good style and attention-grabbing anecdotes, with lots to offer to Christians who want to wade a little outside the canonized christian paths. For everyone else - just skip it, nothing lost.