Books Like The 48 Laws of Power: Six Older Books on Power and War
Six older books on power, war and self-command, each with the weak spot its full review names.
Editorial reading list. Every claim about a book comes from our full review of it, linked under each section. The Laws of Conquest is our own book.
The 48 Laws of Power is a popular book about power by Robert Greene. If you liked that kind of book, these six older books cover power, war and self-command, and each has a full review on this site. Each section gives what the book is, what a reader of that kind gets from it, and the weak spot its full review names.
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince is a 26-chapter treatise on how a new ruler acquires, keeps and loses a state.
The review advises starting with the cases. Chapter VII traces the ruin of Cesare Borgia to the election of Julius II, a cardinal he had injured, since new benefits do not make injured men forget. Chapter XXIV says princes lose their states by neglecting preparation in calm times, and Chapter XXV's flood image makes the same point: build defences and barriers while the weather is fair.
The plain weak spot is cruelty. Chapter VIII treats Agathocles' cruelty as properly applied, since he inflicted all of it at one stroke, and the author judges necessity.
[Read our full review](/reviews/the-prince/)
The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon
The Crowd argues that a gathering becomes a crowd with a collective mind, and that each member's conscious personality vanishes inside it.
Readers of power books get the mechanics of persuasion. Le Bon says a word works through the images it evokes rather than its exact sense, and he names democracy, socialism and equality as terms vague enough to absorb a crowd's hopes. Repetition does the rest: a claim repeated often enough is remembered without its source and ends up believed. Faith in a person or idea, he writes, multiplies a follower's strength tenfold, and leaders provide that faith.
The plain weak spot is proof. The review says Le Bon supports the case mostly with anecdote and assertion.
[Read our full review](/reviews/the-crowd/)
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
This is Lionel Giles's 1910 translation of thirteen chapters, running from laying plans through terrain to the use of spies.
The strongest lesson is concentration. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks, and numerical strength from forcing the enemy to prepare against you. The review says the claim can be checked against any map.
The spy chapter gives the clearest chain. A converted enemy agent, bribed and housed, becomes the first source for the rest, and the local, inward, doomed and surviving spies all depend on him.
The plain weak spot is the dated material, in Chapters VI, IX, XI and XII. Chapter XII ties fire attacks to lunar days, and the text gives no evidence for those links.
[Read our full review](/reviews/the-art-of-war/)
Napoleon's Maxims of War by Napoleon I
The book holds seventy-eight numbered maxims. Each carries a note that cites campaigns from 1644 to 1814.
The reader gets short rules tied to named campaigns. Maxim XVII says a weaker army that wants to avoid battle with a superior force must entrench every night and hold a good defensive position. Its note cites the Duke of Berwick's 1706 campaign, which took about ten thousand prisoners without a general action. Maxim XXIX tells a general to gather his whole force before a battle, and its note adds that reinforcements should stay hidden, since the enemy imagines them stronger than they are.
The plain weak spot is the harshest material. Maxim XV puts the glory and honor of the army ahead of its men's safety, and the notes leave that passage standing.
[Read our full review](/reviews/napoleons-maxims-of-war/)
Anabasis by Xenophon
Anabasis is Xenophon's first-hand record of a mercenary army left without its commanders in Persia, and of its march to the Black Sea.
A reader who wants leadership in practice gets how an improvised command holds together. After the seizure of the generals, Xenophon gets the army to vote to burn its wagons and tents, so the baggage train does not become its general. A rule then says any bystander must help an officer punish an offender. The fixes are specific: two hundred slingers are enrolled that night, on the claim that Rhodian bullets reach twice as far as Persian stones.
The plain weak spot is Xenophon himself. The review says some passages in Books V and VII are largely Xenophon defending his conduct over pay, and Book VII, thick with wages owed, moves more slowly than the rest.
[Read our full review](/reviews/anabasis/)
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations is twelve books of short numbered sections, addressed by Marcus Aurelius to himself, in Meric Casaubon's 1634 English translation.
A reader who runs a unit, a company or a household gets drills for steady judgment. Each morning Marcus names the people he expects to meet, the idle, the ungrateful, the railer and the envious, and gives the reason none of them can make him incur anything truly reproachful. He also offers an image for holding a principle: the way a wrestler keeps both hands free, rather than the way a gladiator fights with one sword.
The plain weak spot is the premise. The review notes that the book takes as given that a divine ruling principle makes all things work together for good, so a reader who does not share that view has to supply it.
[Read our full review](/reviews/meditations/)
The Laws of Conquest by C.F. Cedar is our own book, with forty laws, each taken from a real campaign. If you want the rules themselves, with the campaigns behind them, see [The Laws of Conquest](/#book).