The 48 Laws of Power — A literacy of power — read it to recognise the game whether you want to play it or not.

Power is exchanged in every room you walk into — at work, in families, in friendships — and most people are illiterate in its grammar. Robert Greene's 1998 book gathers 48 patterns by which power has been won and lost for three thousand years, drawn from courtiers, generals, con artists, and statesmen. This page is the literacy version: each law explained without the bro-y triumphalism, with the d