An essay by John Melonakos
Book Review: Never Eat Alone
One of my favorite books is Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. Here are the reasons I like the book:
- It is entertaining through storytelling
- It is informative and disruptive in the information it conveys (i.e. most people do not naturally practice the advice it gives)
- The advice is practical and nothing is really over-the-top like a lot of personal improvement books
- The take-home principles are well-articulated; here are 2 examples:
- real networking is about finding ways to make other people more successful
- the best thing you can do to help another person is to directly impact one of these three things: health, wealth, and children
I read the book in 2007, and I still remember many of the tips quite frequently. For instance, the book makes a point that eating is not about finding the right thing to eat on the menu and recommends selecting something quickly and putting the menu aside to spend more time in valuable discussion. Whenever I sit down to a menu, I remember that.
Have you read Never Eat Alone? What are your favorite networking books?
From the conversation
Comments preserved from the original post.
Karen Chen
I just finished reading the book and absolutely loved it. I am gonna read his second book Who’s got my back as well. This book is so helpful and convincing that I will try to meet new people at the Chicago Ideas Week. Can’t wait.
And I like this brief recap of the book. In my book review, I shared some personal stories from years before as well (Jiayunchen.wordpress.com).