Books Like The 48 Laws of Power, for Business and the Trades

You finished The 48 Laws of Power and you want the next one. Here's the short version: Sun Tzu and Machiavelli got there first, Greene reused the format twice more on different subjects, and none of the five were built for a trade business. One other book was.

The shape is the whole trick

Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power came out in 1998, published by Viking in New York, a Joost Elffers production. Forty-eight laws in total, each one a short chapter with a title you can hold in your head: conceal your intentions, win through your actions, never through argument.

The content is history: generals, courtiers, tycoons, three thousand years of it, each law built around a title, a historical case and a judgment. The history is the packaging. The shape underneath it, short and numbered, is what's worth copying.

A long argument gets skimmed. A short, numbered one gets opened at any page and used.

What the older books cover

The numbered short-chapter book is older than Greene. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, traditionally attributed to the Chinese military strategist of that name, runs thirteen chapters on the craft of war.

Machiavelli's The Prince, written around 1513 and printed in 1532 after his death, runs twenty-six chapters of advice on acquiring and keeping political power. Both books are short, and neither pads itself.

Read either one for the history and it's a good read on its own terms. Read it for the shape, a short numbered chapter you can open on any page, and you'll recognise the same container Greene used four and a half centuries later.

Greene didn't stop at 48

He used the same shape twice more. The 33 Strategies of War, published by Viking in 2006, runs thirty-three chapters on conflict rather than power alone. The Laws of Human Nature, from 2018, runs eighteen laws on how people actually behave underneath what they say. The chapters in the two later books run longer than the bite-sized laws in the original, but the numbering and the one-idea-per-chapter structure carry across all three.

Three different subjects, the same numbered backbone each time. Pick the one for your actual problem: conflict, people, or power.

A long argument gets skimmed. A numbered law gets remembered.

What none of these books are about

None of the five is about running a business where you own the customer, someone else swings the tools, and you live on the gap between the two. That's not a knock on any of them. It's just not the subject.

You can still use the pattern. Read any of the five and you'll pick up a way of thinking in short, numbered, memorable units instead of one long argument you forget by Thursday. Carry that habit into your own trade and apply it to your own problem: the quote, the subbie, the client who wants to cut you out.

For a trade business specifically, start with the customer relationship, not the history. Read why you should fall in love with the thin cut on a thousand deals instead of chasing the fat one on three jobs a year.

MIDDLEMAN takes the shape and puts it on a building site

I started on the tools myself. I went on to build a property maintenance company in London that worked for housing associations and letting agents, using a network of subcontractors. I ran the back office, the subbies did the physical work, and the gap between what the client paid and what the job cost was the business.

That's the gap MIDDLEMAN was built to close: not power in a court, but the gap between what a customer pays and what the work actually costs.

MIDDLEMAN has forty-eight numbered laws of its own, climbing seven floors instead of one long argument: The Eyes, The Position, The Grip, The Moat, The Climb, The Choice, The Penthouse. Then a 49th law, sealed shut instead of handed over on page one. The full telling of what's behind that sealed door is a separate book, The Family Secret, inner circle only, not for sale.

Read the full walkthrough of what's on each floor in the book review, or start with the 48 laws explained in one page if you want the shape before you buy it.

The MIDDLEMAN ebook costs $6.99 for the ePub and PDF together. No DRM, no account, and both files are yours to keep the moment you pay.

Pick the book for your problem

Six books, six different problems, in the order they were written. Match the book to the one you actually have this month, not the one that looks best on a shelf.

• The Art of War: military strategy, thirteen chapters, the oldest of the group.
• The Prince: advice on acquiring and keeping political power.
• The 48 Laws of Power: the full historical sweep, courts and generals, forty-eight laws.
• The 33 Strategies of War: the same author's format pointed at conflict.
• The Laws of Human Nature: the same author's format pointed at people.
• MIDDLEMAN: the same shape pointed at a trade business, where the customer is real and the gap is yours to keep.

You don't need to read all six. Pick the one that fixes what's actually costing you money this week.

Where to go next

For Kiyosaki and Hormozi too, read the best books for tradesmen who want to quit the tools. If you want to see the full staircase MIDDLEMAN climbs, floor by floor, the 48 laws has it in full. For listening instead of reading, THE EDGE is a separate book on ElevenReader, the mechanics of the money rather than the laws, first chapters free.

Greene borrowed a shape that's thousands of years old and pointed it at courts and generals. Start with MIDDLEMAN if you're ready to point the same shape at your own trade and move from doing the work to owning the customer.