The Prosperous Peasant: Five Secrets of Fortune & Fullfillment Review

Several weekends ago I attended a Personal Finance Bloggers Conference in San Francisco held by MyStrands, NetworthIQ, and Expensr. The trip itself was a blast, I met a ton of new faces, including many personal finance bloggers, and had an opportunity to discuss what I’d be interested in with a new personal finance tool. A full recap of the weekend can be found at Get Rich Slowly, who also happened to get a copy of The Prosperous Peasant out to me for review.

My first impressions of The Prosperous Peasant were that it’s written in very much the same manner as The Richest Man in Babylon, just set in Samurai-era Japan and with slightly different lessons. The story follows two friends, Jiro and Gonsuke, as they seek to find enlightenment from the renowned Samurai, Hideyoshi.

JD gives a great review of the details of the book, explaining the five secrets, so I’ll pass in that department and share only my opinion of the book as a whole. I really enjoyed it because it told a colorful story while weaving in important principles everyone would do well to understand. JD complains about the book starting slowly, which I agree that it does, and gets a little confusing with all the Japanese terms, which I also agree that it does, but I feel all of those help establish the environment in which the story will be told.

I have yet to ask my wife to take a look at this book but I suspect those who are a fan of fiction would find this book far more appealing than any book written by a personal finance expert. Those books, while perfect for people who want hard numbers, analysis, and pretty graphs; turn most “regular” people off because they’re boring and dry. I feel that this book, and the Richest Man in Babylon, try to marry the entertaining fiction and the valuable prosperity lessons into a book that will appeal to a different class of reader.

Lastly, I believe this style of writing is the only way to convey some of the softer lessons in life in a way that’s engaging and interesting. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with numbers to back up a lesson like “Gratitude attracts luck,” but you can tell a story that does so. It would be difficult to prove, and it would be completely boring to read, how “Conceivable means achievable,” but a fictional narrative handles it quite well.

So, if you’re a number cruncher type, you’ll want to pass on this book. If you’re more into a fictional narrative, you may find this book right up your alley.