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The Secret | 
 enlarge | Author: Rhonda Byrne
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £5.54
You Save: £7.45 (57%)
New (35) Used (11) from £4.00
Rating:  201 reviews
Sales Rank: 84
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1847370292
EAN: 9781847370297
ASIN: 1847370292
Publication Date: December 4, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK Mainland. Delivery is usually 2 - 3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 196 more reviews...
 Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. November 3, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This suffers from the same problems as the DVD.
It's derivative. There is absolutely nothing that hasn't been said over and over again.
It's simplistic. Life can be simple, but that doesn't mean you should treat your audience as if they are too.
It's repetitive. Get a variety of different figures in your niche to all say the same things using slightly different words.
It's nasty. Follow the philosophy through to it's logical conclusion and you are left with the concept that those who suffer have brought it upon themselves. There may be a grain of truth for some of the many unfortunates out there, but try telling a starving family in a poverty- and drought-stricken wilderness that really they ought to just change their attitudes and it'll all work out, then see which religion's version of hell you belong in.
It's insidious. They stack what I am sure they see as reasonable arguments one on top of the other, leading from premise to unfounded conclusion at such speed and in such a fashion that they gradually start to get in just through the continual exposure to the same old message.
The whole thing is trite, simple and hackneyed.
Still, it proves what good underground marketing can do. Don't be a sheep. Borrow it first, read it carefully, think on it, then have a good laugh, give it back and forget you ever heard of this tosh.
Promises what it cannot deliver. October 31, 2008
Should you wish to read this book with the sole intention of feeling both good about yourself and the world in general, then you will undoubtedly find that it lifts the spirits and enables you to view everything through the proverbial 'rose coloured spectacles'. If this is all you want to obtain from this book then my heartfelt good wishes to you. If, on the otherhand, you are desirous of creating miracles (as the blurb promises) then you will be sadly disappointed. To preclude all doubt to the point where you are able to effectively change the world around you, or your future for that matter, takes something that the majority of us simply cannot command. Jesus could do it - but then he was something a bit special. The rest of us, unfortunately, will have to be satisfied with the rose coloured spectacles. Miracles are not intended for the mundane.
 Is the world controlled by a 1% elite? October 21, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book and the video are the two sides of the same coin and I would advise you to follow the one or the other. I will suggest though that you concentrate on the video because the commentary between the quotations are nothing but the proof that some people need a lot more explanations and a lot of paraphrase to understand the basic meaning. Are we all without limits? And that is going to be my very first remark. From my long experience I know that some people are physically handicapped, or mentally handicapped, or psychologically handicapped, or with many hurdles on their road and around them. You should see the state of some of those children born to deep alcoholics or drug addicts. Or what about children with a severe genetic disparagement? And I refuse to say they are just disabled, or differently-abled. They are handicapped by being materialistically in their very body or mind at a disadvantage that will prevent them from doing what most people around them will be able to do. If the mind is intact, and working on positive thinking is the only way for these people, then they can compensate their physical limitations with their spiritual achievements. But you can't run in the standard Olympics without legs just like a bicycle will not run without wheels. And this time, in most of these situations, one will not be able to excel, full stop and period, and if one can excel in one particular field in which he is not or is less limited, it won't be without the help of other people around them. You cannot think positive if there is no signs along that road. The second remark is positive. Apart from these special cases, everyone, absolutely everyone can excel somewhere and that excellence can only be reached if it is targeted, looked for and built. Positive thinking, education, understanding that the pleasure of such achievements is in the goal when reached and not in the effort you have to accomplish, even if for those who will reach the highest points this very effort is a pleasure, the pleasure of the effort itself. A runner has to train day in and day out and that is never, absolutely never a plain entertaining phase of relaxation and abandon. Physical pleasure requires sweat and heart speed. But if one does not set their minds on the aim they are going to strive towards, they will never reach it. Success is enormously in the mind, in the conscious and subconscious motivation of the candidate. Yet it is absolutely false to say that man has no limits. Humanity, and every member of it, has always been limited historically and no one could think plasma physics or quantum computers under Julius Caesar. Each historical period produces its possible fields of investigation that are limited because in a later historical period those fields of investigation will always be vaster, larger, deeper, more intense. Or then the author is speaking metaphorically of man as the representative of humanity in its cosmic history. But that is not helping any individual who is striving to achieve something in his own life. Icarus did try to fly but wax wings were kind of primitive. Then my third and last remark will be a question: why only ONE percent of humanity controls NINETY-SIX percent of wealth? If this is a fact, and it is, it is the proof that all men are not equal in facts but only in rights, and that is so by our collective decision to say so. But one thing is sure: thinking negatively is never good. Think of McCain and Palin and their negative campaigning. Think of all the anarchists of the world who have never achieved the slightest beginning of their dream which is only a negative picture of the world the way it is. If you criticize the world systematically, then your dream becomes the inverted image of this world, hence a negative picture of reality, and that will never guide or inspire people into desiring such a future. When I don't like something I do not ask for the reverse. I wonder what the situation is, what the possibilities are and if another solution is possible and which one. Then I will think positively along that objective, or rather as objective as possible, line, but to demand black because what I don't like is white, or to require red because what I don't like is blue is primitive negative thinking. That kind of realism and collective striving is absent from this book or video and that is a shame because they forget attraction holds the world and the cosmos up because it is always counterbalanced by repulsion. Otherwise the moon would have fallen onto the earth a long very long time ago, even if this repulsion is itself the product of attractions that are standing abreast and against the attraction of the earth. The apple did not fall as long as the stem was strong enough and the apple light enough for the stem not to break. The author of this book or video seems to have forgotten that the cosmos is a complex system of opposed spheres and when a weak point appears, then a catastrophe develops in that weak point, and the earth is doomed sooner or later in cosmic time to disappear, just like the sun which will one day have burned all itself fuel.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dreadful Twaddle October 16, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
After you cut though all the flannel, the secret is revealed. If you think about things they will come to you. No they won't. It takes dedication, persistence and hard work to achieve success, get rich, lose weight or achieve whatever your goal is. This book is delusional and misleading. The elements on positive thinking are fine but they are better expressed in many other self-help books. The 'secret' itself is laughable.
 The Secret and The Scam October 11, 2008
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
A friend of mine bought me this book for my birthday, explaining that it was a best selling spiritual read, so I was looking forward to what it had to say. I can honestly say I was unimpressed from the start. There was this build to this huge life changing 'secret' and it was like waiting for a huge explosion that never actually went off.
This whole Secret is based on wishful, dillusional thnking. It claims that if you want to have money, believe that you will have money and it will come to you. If you want to lose weight, believe that you're losing weight and it will happen. It rarely ever mentions that you have to put work in for these things to happen. In a good way this book does allow people to focus on what they want in life and to focus on the positive, but having a good life, having money and having good relationships requires some work on our part, not just repeating something in our heads and hoping the Universe will deliver. That's just lazy thinking. I gained a lot more from listening to Anthony Robbins CD's then I did from this book. And yes, I'm aware that he's in it for the money too.
This book also spent a lot of time advertising the film version, so there are a lot of people making getting rich from this book. Unfortunately it won't be the readers.
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