In his wonderful, compelling and disturbing debut, cultural phenomenon and magazine writer Tim Ferriss – also the author of The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef – writes like an adolescent genius. His hypnotic tone, originality and rigor grab you from the first sentence. His sheer daring is manifest in his subtitle: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. Readers often group Ferriss’s work with books on managing your time or realizing your dreams.

Like those, his text starts by urging you to define what you really want. Yet, unlike most works in that genre, Ferriss offers his own specific definitions of aspirational terms like “new rich” and pushes you to engage in highly focused “lifestyle design. Internet Explorer 2012 For Windows Vista. ” He provides tools, like “dreamlining” to help you ground your dreams in reality.

Ferriss knocks your thinking so far outside the box that you won’t remember where the box was, let alone why you ever lived in it. And yet, even as you marvel at the likely effectiveness of the techniques he pioneered to such success, you may also think, “Look at the nerve of this guy!” That nerve emerges in the pure hubris of Ferriss’s writing voice. His work is inspiring, but in a self-enclosed way. His irrepressible optimism and self-confidence should give you more confidence in yourself. Surprisingly, his attitudes function mostly to build your confidence in him.