As the title suggests, author Hunter S. Gaylor’s book PLANES PLANTS AND POLITICS: A Mental Framework To Help Overcome Challenges in Any Industry, offers business advice and rules for success around the three areas of his business experience—aviation, agriculture, and political advising.
In the “Planes” section, Gaylor discusses the benefits of having a reliable team: just as a flight crew must work together seamlessly, business leaders must have the right support staff. In “Plants,” Gaylor compares a business idea to a seed that requires the perfect soil and the correct amount of water to grow (in other words, business requires careful due diligence). In the third section, “Politics,” Gaylor draws on his experience as a Washington intern to explain how readers can gain and use influence, not only in government, but in whatever industry or sphere the reader might be trying to succeed. This topic is also used as a metaphor: by observing the way government works (or doesn’t), one can learn a lot about human nature and what methods do or do not work when trying to get large groups of people to come together to get things done.
Throughout the book, Gaylor includes anecdotes from his personal experience in business, world history–and even from the Bible, to illustrate his points–ensuring there is a little something for everyone. He’s not your typical cutthroat businessman advising people on how to get ahead by pushing other people down. His philosophy involves hard work and personal responsibility, and he encourages readers to observe other people and develop empathy for them. This idea extends to his political ideology, as he sees President Trump as someone who succeeded based on his understanding of human nature and his recognition of a “silent majority” of voters who felt they were not being represented. You can help yourself, Gaylor argues fairly convincingly, by paying attention to the needs of others.
However, Gaylor’s advice tends to be repetitive. In the chapter featuring the plant analogy, he extends the metaphor of watering the seed of your dream over five pages, stating the same basic principle over and over again with slightly different wording. Also, his conservative political beliefs may be polarizing to some, and they’re also not very astutely expressed. For example, he accuses liberals of suffering from a victim mentality, then condemns the University of Berkeley for refusing to host controversial right-wing speakers, declaring, “the victims of Berkeley protests are conservative, wealthy, or just white.” Apparently when conservatives are “victims,” their suffering is genuine and noble.
While the specific business advice Hunter S. Gaylor offers in PLANES PLANTS AND POLITICS is not particularly original, his approach via the three principle topics–used in part as well-constructed metaphors–is novel.
~Lisa Butts for IndieReader