Overall I enjoyed the viewpoint on how our projects reveal certain aspects to our personality. I found it interesting, but I really wanted more evidence to that particular idea and not the foundations and evolution to the process of the original viewpoints. I wanted to read this in hopes of being able to steer my child in the right direction for higher achievements but I felt this was more theorized than having an actual fountain to make long lasting choices to better ourselves. But I could see a lot of the information holding weight to certain individuals, just not me. It was an enjoyable read though.

This short book gives us good look into our own personality and who we are. I think this was a good read although a bit short. I wished it was a little longer.

Good Day All,

I finally finished reading this book which to me seemed to go on forever and ever. I was surprised by the content which was not expected at all. I guess I should have done a little more research into the author to see what I was getting myself into before hand.

Well, to start this out there are a few editorial mistakes here and there throughout one example would be in chapter 2 in my kindle app it has location 363 of 1229, "The care you take in getting Mom into <the a> nursing home is more than duty, as it breaks your heart to see what Alzheimer’s has taken from her." Is it "the" nursing home or "a".

Even with the minor mistake I could live with but why I gave such a low score is because the book is not at what I thought or it is portrayed to be, a guide to self not a guide to the biology of self. In the beginning chapters there is a huge spiel on the biology makeup/chemistry of you. I learned all that in Biology 101 and it still put me off the book so someone who hasn't taken a Bio class will like it even less, it's like going to science class. He does cover some of what makes us tick but it's at the end.

Although i did enjoy some parts of it like when he started discussing the "Big Five (5)" and the Quiz located in the appendix. No fault to the author or NetGalley I blame myself because I should have done a little more research into the author before selecting this title for review. It's just that I've been looking for some good self-help guides and I thought this would one. For me it was not but it maybe for you.

Who Are You Really is a TED Talk, not a research book or study. It reads like a talk, not a book. It is peppered with mild laugh lines to keep the audience with the speaker. You can see them coming, and you can hear Little cash in. Basically, you are reading a script.

The script is a self-help through self-identification course. Little segregates people into buckets and deals with them that way. Do it yourself, and gain some perspective, perhaps. Or change your approach, your projects and your sensitivities to be more effective.

There are five buckets: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN). On a scale of 1-5, you rate yourself, and formulas assign you a personality. If you are not self-aware or at least honest with yourself, this is the book for you.

The scoring however, doesn’t make sense. For example, the average score for Conscientiousness is 11. But the formula is question 13 (maximum value 5) less questions 3 and 8 (maximum value 10). For Agreeableness, you add scores from questions 2 and 12 (max 10) and subtract from the score from question 7 (max 5). The average score is somehow 12. This quickly puts everyone in the bucket Subhuman.

Possibly the most valuable chapter tackles authenticity, buzzword without equal in western society. Little says we can have multiple authenticities, conflicting authenticities, and private authenticities. They are all valid – and authentic. Plus, we need to understand their strategic value, and not just wear them on our sleeves. Bravo.

David Wineberg

TED talks are a great format for introducing new ideas. But, generally, I find the TED books that sometimes follow to be a bit dull and it makes the initial ideas sometimes seem not fully grounded in science. This book is a textbook example of this for me. Stick with the talk, skip the book. Truthfully, if I had realized that this was TED based before I requested the ARC, I would have taken my own advice.