The Definitive Work on Self-Esteem by the Leading Pioneer in the Field

There are some books where you can just sense the depth of the ideas coming off of the pages; this is one of those books. If you've never had exposure to these kinds of ideas before, it's potentially life changing. Highly recommended.

The title pretty much says it all. You walk away from this book, with not only a comprehensive understanding of how and why we are the way we are, but with the tools to work on the issues you want to better. This is one of the best books, psychology or otherwise, that I have ever read.

Brilliant book that everyone should read. Understand yourself and others better. You can either apply the tools and exercises that the book contains to improve your consciouseness about how you view yourself and others, or simply read throught the book to get a view over one of the most fundamental aspects of human psychology. Branden is also a talented writer which makes the book it self a comfortable and enjoyable read. It's content is easily accessible for someone with an education, who is used to plow through rather deep material, so it may not be suitable for one who prefers a simple read. This is really not a "for dummies" book, but there are no quick fixes to self- esteem issues either. In my opinion this is what makes it good - Branden takes this subject seriously, and so should the reader.

After just finishing this book, I must admit it ended at a high note as the first 3/4 was a bit sluggish. I specfically like how he relates self esteem to the workplace and culture. The final chapters were by far the best. Worth your time reading but it could have been consolidated a bit better.

Overall I really enjoyed the first half of the book thru the 6 pillars which provided valuable insight, however, the second half of the book was extremely technical, too much psychoanalyst stuff. I would still recommend the book to anyone looking to gain insight and strengthen self esteem; the book provides very good exercises.

I bought this to understand myself more. It is one of the best book I have read. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels lost at times and need a good pick-me-up literature to read. It helped me see things from a different angle, which is all we really need sometimes.

Only half way thru, this book is very insightful, one can easily relate to the examples and see how their behavior affects self esteem and what are the habits that strengthen it.
Highly recommended!

Goes well beyond 'just' self-esteem. I found that sentence stem completion is a great way to really uncover quite a bit.
Positive & pragmatic.
Not a shallow pop-culture approach, but rather deep, intellectual, meaningful.
This is not one of those self-help books you read in a day, this is a serious piece of work.

I really like this Dr's philosophy about self-esteem, and I find his approach very useful as I do my own personal therapy in conjunction with professional therapy. I have told several friends with similar problems to check it out.

Great book up until Chapter 13 where it starts getting into child rearing and then goes off onto teachers and subjects that I believe are irrelevant. The first part of the book is very useful and thought provoking and then chapter 13 and on it starts losing the plot. So that is where I stopped reading and was disappointed. I bought the book for my self growth not for raising kids.

Branden is a universally recognized author on this subject, so far be it from me to question anything he does or writes, but it just seems like the text of this book is written to be as complex and hard to follow as possible. Great subject matter, a thorough treatment of the same, but I can't imagine that this is the most palatable distillation of the two.