while the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer almost irrational force ive found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn who eschewed the spotlight and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition from the prologuemany of us insist the main impediment to a full successful life is the outside world in fact the most common enemy lies within our ego early in our careers it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent with success it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems in failure it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult at every stage ego holds us backthe ego is the enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples from literature to philosophy to history we meet fascinating figures like howard hughes katharine graham bill belichick and eleanor roosevelt all of whom reached the highest levels of power and success by conquering their own egos their strategies and tactics can be ours as wellbut why should we bother fighting ego in an era that glorifies social media reality tv and other forms of shameless selfpromotion armed with the lessons in this book as holiday writes you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness and as a result you will be liberated to accomplish the worldchanging work youve set out to achieve