The 4-Hour Workweek

Useful to everyone, with caveats:

I'll start with the bad - The author had a good philosophy marred by a blind indifference to the stakes and consequences the average person considers when deciding whether to 9-5 it. But maybe that's the attitude you need to write this kind of book.

The good: While you're reading it you'll be motivated to think about what you want, why you want it, and to take action to get there, but not necessarily the steps in this book. It's not a how-to for everyone even though the author positions it that way. His approach is: here's how you should live your life, and here's the way I accomplished that. He doesn't really make it clear that there are ways other than his own, which can be discouraging if you can't see yourself taking his approach.

I'm being vague for a reason - if I knew his approach before I started reading I probably would never have picked it up, and would have missed out on a really valuable perspective.