Don't let the middling, three-star review lead you astray: I actually recommend this book for the very tiny number of people in its audience. There simply aren't very many other books that even try to address the dynamics of extremely wealthy families. This book's shortcoming is that it is hamstrung by its brevity. It's treatment of subjects tends to be very high-level and cursory. While good, it is almost certain to leave you wanting more. It covers a ton of subjects in ~150 pages, which means that many of them get only 3 or 4 pages, which is just enough to scratch the surface rather than give any kind of deep dive.

The target audience for this are families with "dynastic wealth". That is, so much money it is going to last several generations. In practice that means, I dunno, over $20 million? Something like that. A lot of the advice is also based around assuming this wealth has been in place for a while and there are several generations at play.

I'd say the "target persona family" is something like $100 million and 20+ members of the family from 3+ generations, with the financial entrepreneur who started the whole thing in their 70s, if not actually passed away already. That doesn't mean it is useless in other situations but it does mean some of the advice is less immediately useful.

So the audience for a book like this going to be tiny. I'm not in it. But it gives good, albeit somewhat cursory guidance, on a wide range of topics. How to deal with the 3rd, 4th, and later generations that are increasingly distant from the original source of wealth (likely a family business of some sort). How to accept that maybe none of your heirs are or want to be entrepreneurs like Grandpop was? How to integrate spouses so they don't feel "lesser" than "real" family members? How to discuss prenuptial agreements? How to discuss the family wealth with your children at various ages? How to look for friends who aren't just hangers on? How to think about loans from the "family money" if someone wants to start a business?

Unsurprisingly, in many cases the advice is fairly straightforward and just involves pausing for introspection and communicating clearly. While true-ish, I think the book's biggest weakness is that it doesn't give enough frameworks for these times of introspection or communication.

The most intriguing sections are about family governance. If you've ever been in the management of a group at work, there is a lot that is familiar. Surveying family members to see what problems and challenges they think the family is facing. (Keep in mind, there might be 40+ family members; maybe only 5 of them are directly involved in the family business these days.) Coming up with family values and missions statements, to try to keep dozens of people on the same page over generations, instead of fracturing and drifting apart. Having family meetings (preferably at an off-site, not someone's house, and probably with a professional facilitator in the first few) -- quarterly or annually -- to go over family business, big happenings in the family, workshops, etc. (They recommend two half-days of family meetings.)

One of the most striking points they make: a family like this probably spends quite a lot of money on maintaining and improving their financial wealth. How much money are they spending every year on maintaining and improving their families human capital, intellectual capital, social capital, and spiritual capital?

This book is made for a very specific group of people. Since I’m not part of that group, it’s hard to tell if this is good advice or not. I don’t suggest reading it unless you consider yourself to be in a wealthy family.