The Heart of Success comes highly recommended by an impressive list of 'successful' business leaders, but you can feel the cynicism rise by the time you've read the title - yet another manual of how to 'make it' by someone who had all the opportunities. Yet there is not one bit of advice about how to make money or climb the corporate ladder. In fact this is the assumed knowledge! It is more about knowing when to stop climbing or when to accept the lower salary job.

Parsons impresses on you that 'success' is bigger than the accumulation of wealth. I am sure on the surface we would all agree, but it somehow takes over in the whirl of the immediate dominating our priorities. Guilty.

An easy read - perfect for the train. It is even spaced out so that you feel like you are making progress for those of us who need to feel like we are making progress; a business-like executive summary concludes every chapter and lots of stories, so that it becomes real and avoids academic presentation altogether. Once you start to see yourself in the stories, your cynicism starts to fade. Parsons clearly knows his audience. Certainly he targets city bankers and lawyers, but anyone who has a job is going to benefit from this book.

There's something about the way Parsons convinces you, that makes you think that just perhaps here is a 'lifestyle guru', as dubbed by the Today programme, who practices what he preaches and has done all through founding a major city law firm.

And my cynicism died.

My one reservation is that, though there is a lot of practical advice and checks, my overwhelming suspicion is that those readers in the legal and finance world may find they have to hand in their notice if they take the book completely on board. That or their board directors will be facing a revolt.

Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 034078623X
£6.99 RRP Paperback

Daniel Brewer is Managing Director of Resonance.

Email: daniel@resonance.ltd.uk