The Book Depository Winners by Alastair Campbell
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Price: £11.37
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Winners : Paperback : Cornerstone : 9780099598886 : : 31 Mar 2016 : Drawing on the wisdom of an astonishing array of talented people - from elite athletes to top managers, from rulers of countries to rulers of global business empires - Alastair Campbell uses his forensic skills, as well as his own experience of politics and sport, to get to the heart of success. The Book Depository Winners by Alastair Campbell - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780099598886
MPN: 9780099598886
GTIN: 9780099598886
Author: Hamish Porter
Rating: 5
Review: Alastair Campbell is a man that divides opinion, in the political world and out of it. Seen as the man who brought “spin” in British politics to a new level, and with it helping Tony Blair win 3 successful elections for the Labour party, he is also painted as one of those involved heavily in the infamous and dreadful decision to send the British Army to Iraq. However, his views on this can be seen in this other book, while this latest release from the man strays very much away from British politics to observe various aspects and traits winning people have that make them so successful. The book is split into sections, with each section starting off discussing different parts of the skills Alastair sees as essential to any sort of success, which then proceeds into a case study of an individual who Campbell feels shows the perfect example of the winning trait in action. For example, the first section of the book focuses on the holy grail of “Objective, Strategy, Tactics”, followed by chapters on how effective leadership and teamship is essential to carrying out a winning OST blueprint. After this, characters from the world of business, sport, and politics are given as examples to study, from Ana Wintour of Vogue fame to Jose Mourinho, possibly the most infamous non-player figure in the world of professional football right now. This writing format is continued throughout the book, with the second section talking about a winning mind-set, using examples from the highly successful cycling team Team Sky and their marginal gains ideology, followed by another case study of THE most infamous figure in contemporary sport, Floyd Mayweather Jr. This format means the book and lessons being taught throughout are easy to understand and makes the book a highly structured, yet unique and enjoyable read, with Campbell constantly name dropping well known people he has met and what we can learn from them. If this reeks of Piers Morgan’s Mail on Sunday columns, then do not worry, unlike Mr Morgan, rather than simply saying something like “I met Maradona, he said hi Piers, you are so awesome”, Campbell instead tells us a tale of how Maradona uses crowd visualisation before any kind of footballing event and sees himself a few hours later scoring the winning goal, therefore making the task to be carried out much easier when the actual game is played as Maradona has visualised the moment that befalls him in the real world. Piers, he is not. Even into the later chapters, the book still proves to be a consistently well written and occasionally very touching read. The discussion of the early life of Australian surfing champion Layne Beachley and how a challenging upbringing can develop characteristics essential to success certainly resonates with my personal challenging childhood, and yet when you see Beachley’s reaction when she finally reaches the top, you can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed at her reaction. But winners are never satisfied. Despite all of this, there are a few niggling issues about Campbell’s book, however these are not related to the actual writing in anyway but the content of it. While I am a huge sports fan and political talker like AC, I often find his world of “business” talk to be fairly one-dimensional, focusing on big business and big businessmen only. There is very little time given to the major creative business industries (Music, Acting, Film?) and I personally believe this leads to a major hole that has yet to be filled, as surely we could learn new winning traits from highly successful popular musicians or actors? Also, Alastair may need to change the chapter on Australian sport being winners after their dreadful Ashes performance this year before the paperback comes out, but as hindsight is a great thing, we can let him off on this one. The book ends with the ultimate winner of our modern world in the Queen and her family, summing up how she and her team of advisers used every single trait described in previous chapters to save the Royals from the dire pit they had dug themselves in throughout the 90’s into the most loved and respected family in the world today. Finally, we are given a summary of what we have, and what we can learn from the many people discussed throughout the book, and the very last pages sum up what winners do, how they do it, and why they do it. Alastair says that the book was originally going to be called winning, but changed it to Winners after realising the book was more about individuals and how THEY win rather than just how TO win. It’s this choice that makes this book, Alastair, and me after choosing to read it, the real winners.
Author: Gustavo Valencia
Rating: 4
Review: I would have given 5* with less details that in spite of providing context take away from the message. Had to skip paragraphs at times when I was a bit tired.
