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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Title Grabbed Me, But You Should Be More Careful!, 23 May 2004
As a person who majored in history, I knew that very little is known about Attila the Hun. Having deliberately avoided the book for over a decade, it suddenly occurred to me that there might be a lot of interesting information here that I had been ignoring. So I read the book. I goofed! I should have skimmed a couple of chapters first. There is nothing in here about Attila that I did not know when I started. And the leadership secrets are not based on anything Attila said, but the author's conclusions about what leaders should do. Each chapter is introduced with a little Attila vignette to help justify the title of the book, and provide some context. Sometimes it works, and often it doesn't. Let me explain my rating system for the book. As a leadership book, I rated this book as two stars. The reason I rated it so low is that the book has over 200 aphorisms in it that are vague, pretty disconnected from today's world and usually contradict one another. For example, each of them is phrased in terms of what Attila and a Hun should do. On the other hand, at some point, I began to read the book as a satire on leadership books, and I thought it was pretty funny. On that account, I rated it as four stars. I would have rated it higher if it had been shorter or the chapter sequencing had made more sense to me. The chapter on surviving defeat comes after the chapter when Attila voluntarily removed himself from Italy after meeting the Pope, many years after the defeat that is discussed in the next chapter. But that comes as no surprise since the author has told you about both of these things many times before in this short book. If you average a 2 and a 4 star, that's a 3 star rating. On the positive side, Attila did show remarkable flexibility in learning new strategies and tactics after the battle of Chalons (which was a horrible defeat for the Huns). If the book had focused on the lessons of that battle and its aftermath, this book could have been a lot more valuable. However, if the Attila the Hun analogy fits, wear it. Any approach that helps you overcome your stalled thinking is a good one. This one didn't happen to carry me away. If you do decide to read the book, the best two chapters are 9 and 10 on the responsibilities of a leader and decisiveness.
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