Customer Rating: 
Summary: Why was "Hitman" a hit? Here's how Perkins would read the negative reviews
Comment: PRO: At the end of the book, he says you, the reader, are the reason the world is the way it is. After listening to his nonstop bashing of corporations and governments, I expected him to conclude with a final "coup de grace" on those two entities, but I was wrong! He puts the blame where it should be: all of us. We are those people in the corporations and the governments reflect what we want. If we want to blame someone, let's start with ourselves. I commend Perkins for saying that. "Any fool can criticise, and most fools do," said Andrew Carnegie. Those few paragraphs almost took the book to two stars. Unfortunately, the rest of it was terrible.
CONS: Many other reviewers will point out the myriad of flaws and shortcomings of this book. I'll illustrate how Perkins would read all these one star reviews. He would say:
- They're written by jackals, government officials, and corporate hitmen trying to discredit me.
- They're people who are so naive that they don't understand how the real world works. They say this is a fantasy. It's no fantasy, baby, this was real life!
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PERKINS: Perkins is a man filled with regret. He dreamed of living an exciting life, but ended up living just a mediocre one. For example:
- He wanted to go to Ivy League Schools, but went to a ho-hum schools.
- He wanted to be an executive, but he never got beyond middle management.
- He wanted to be a spy for the NSA, but all he got was an interview.
- He wanted to live a glamourous life, but he got all the pedestrian glamour of a typical international corporate job.
- He wanted babes, but he just got a divorce and a few flings.
In short, he feels like a failure. He's frustrated by that so he's decided to reinterpret his whole life, make it more exciting, boost his ego a bit by writing a book that makes his life seem more interesting than it was. He fills it with cloak and dagger intrigue, but there's really nothing there. It's obvious that it's all in his mind.
He depicts himself as an "insider," but offers scant interesting insider stuff. Most of his theories are backed by his daily news source: the NY Times.
His opinion that construction projects drive our economy and decisions is wrong. Foreign infrastructure projects make up less than 1% of the US government budget and not even 0.1% of our economy. Furthermore, he says that "very few" benefit from the new electricity plants we build in Ecuador or Indonesia. Really? So we build a multi-billion dollar plant to power three rich people's homes? Wrong. Thousands of poor people benefit from the roads and electricity plants. That's why they invite us there. Duh! Do we also benefit? Sure! We probably wouldn't do it otherwise! DUH!
The other irritation about this book is that he thinks he's making novel arguments, when they're usually obvious to all. For example, corporatations are self-interested. Wow. I never would have guessed that. Let's add: humans are self-interested. What do you expect Exxon to do? Sell oil for less than it costs them to make it? Do you expect the salesman of a construction firm to not try to get the best deal he can get for his company? Doesn't he want to get a bonus and send his children to a good college?
He whines about people working for a dollar a day in "sweatshops." Are we holding them at gunpoint? No. On the contrary, people in Asia work at Nike's factories to earn their $1 a day for two reasons:
1. It's better than getting 50 cents a day, which is what the local companies pay. Working for a foreign company is PRESTIGIOUS and coveted.
2. Their daily costs are 90 cents a day. Some love to focus on how little people in third world countries make, but they often forget how little it costs them to live. Imagine their conversations about us: "It costs $100/day to live in America. How do they do it? We're much better off here because it costs just 90 cents per day." There are two sides of the equation, Perkins.
CONCLUSION: There were only two reasons I listened to this misleading and overrated book till the end. First, my friend recommended it. Second, I was curious to see what SOLUTION he proposed. It's easy to complain. But what do you think we should do instead?
As I mentioned at the beginning, he places part of the blame on you and me. Great. Well said. Now what? He tells us to drive less. I bet he drives and flies much more than any of us because he's promoting his book. He tell us that we should have a more fair world. That we should have medical services available for all, information should be widespread, and that we should think of the consequences of our actions. Blah... blah.. blah... as you can see: no specifics. Why not? Because it's nobody would like to do what would need to be done. He's asking us to change human nature. Sorry, Perkins, it's ain't going to happen. And Perkins is proof that it won't happen because lives in a nice house, buys food from corporations, votes for the political establishment, doesn't send 50% of his income to third world countries, etc....
Get this if you want to laugh.
