Thick Face, Black Heart: The Warrior Philosophy for Conquering the Challenges of Business and Life [Paperback]

In terms of originality, refreshing writing style and pure punch, this book is simply great. I envision Chin-Ning Chu as sort of a cross between Deepak Chopra and Richard Marcinko (talking about personality here, not looks- as far as I know she is an attractive Chinese woman). If her philosophy is taken seriously in the Asian business world, then America is going to have some very respectable competition down the road (unlike the socialist backwater of Europe, where entrepreneurs are treated like dirt and it's still taboo to fire someone for incompetence).

Thick Face, Black Heart takes a lot of the typical self-help pap you find in 95% of other motivational books and throws it out the window. Being a motivational book, it does have its moments of sappiness, but they are few and far between in comparison to what you would expect. If you are sensitive to philosophical or theological issues, her blend of Western and Eastern thoughts on the divine might tweak you a little, but they don't play a major role in shaping what Thick Face, Black Heart is about. Like most of the good books I read, I enjoyed this one because it was so insightful. Speaking as someone who is committed to shaping my world and my perception of reality to the way I see fit, rather than passively accepting the random beliefs and limitations that were handed to me by life, this book provided some real food for thought.

I agree with a previous reviewer, who threw away his entire self-help library after reading this book. Thick Face, Black Heart nails it.

After reading the book, I appreciate having this as another way to look at things and see how it can be useful. However, I would say that about 75 pages of 368 are actually worth reading and present new, worthwhile ideas. The rest is a waste of time.

Chapters 1, 2, and 12-16 are somewhat interesting and do a decent job of explaining her concept. The rest is, for the most part, boring and cheesy. The anecdotes are not that interesting and often *barely* applicable to her point. The writing style is simplistic, yet somehow still not concise or to the point.

Chu throws in a chapter here, a chapter there about various self-help issues, without providing any depth or coherence and without linking these ideas to her main concept (aside from frequently intoning such pointless lines as "__________ is the essence of Thick Face, Black Heart"). Give up too easily? Here's a chapter on perseverance. Money troubles? Here's a chapter on that, too. Feel like other people take advantage of you? Here's another chapter! These chapters are entirely unessential to the main idea and can be skipped entirely, unless you need help in those areas -- in which case you should probably get a whole book on that topic.

She even wanders so much within each chapter that it becomes difficult to see a big picture. Maybe that's why she included a "Summary of Points" at the end of each chapter -- however, her writing and concepts are so simplistic that the summaries only serve to lay bare how unfocused her writing is.

Much of the book is a simplified hybrid of various religions and philosophies which does little to clarify the main point. At times, it gets ugly. Chu oversimplifies Lincoln's choice to free the slaves (somehow missing the important detail that his Emancipation Proclamation only freed the Confederate slaves -- but what a great guy!), she throws in bits of an Indian epic, she quotes the Art of War... but she doesn't get at the guts of any of them. You can't expect all that in one book, but I personally think you shouldn't try. What particularly annoyed me was her claim to stay religion-neutral by using terms like "the Divine" and "the Creator". In reality, she takes on an essentially Christian viewpoint when talking about interaction with God and a vaguely Hindu/Buddhist viewpoint when discussing our place in the cosmos. This is not a unified theory, folks, it's a neo-pseudo-meta-spiritual Frankenstein. The one thing I will give her credit for is doing a pretty good job of portraying the concept of Dao (not easy!), especially as it pertained to the concept of TFBH.

So why the generous two stars? Because I think, despite all my criticism, the concept is valuable. Unfortunately, Chu has tried to cram in a bunch of other self-help concepts and some new-age feel-good blather. The truth is, if you understand and practice her TFBH concept, you can deduce the rest of it easily.

A 75-page, summarized version of TFBH, stripped down to the essentials, clearly organized, and with most of the boring anecdotes taken out, would be a great read. At 368 pages, this version is not worth the time.