The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers

Professional speaker Banayan debuts with a self-aggrandizing memoir unconvincingly couched as a business book. As a college freshman under great parental pressure to succeed, Banayan writes of how he was looking for a way to forge his own path, like the entrepreneurs and entertainers he admired. To fund this, he “hacked” The Price Is Right (by researching the casting producer’s name and taking last-minute advice from an audience member) and used the money from his winnings to start pursuing interviews with famous, successful people. He frames the book around his quest to reach them via the “third door”—neither over the transom nor personal connections, but via sheer persistence and audacity. In this way, he won access to such luminaries as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Tony Hsieh, and Steven Spielberg. While he covers a few lessons imparted by his interviewees, most of the book consists of stories of how he blustered his way into their offices. This work has little to offer to readers beyond a tribute to the author’s own chutzpah. [em](June) [/em]