The Third Door

April 16, 2018
Professional speaker Banayan debuts with a self-aggrandizing memoir unconvincingly couched as a business book. As a college freshman under great parental pressure to succeed, Banayan writes of how he was looking for a way to forge his own path, like the entrepreneurs and entertainers he admired. To fund this, he “hacked” The Price Is Right (by researching the casting producer’s name and taking last-minute advice from an audience member) and used the money from his winnings to start pursuing interviews with famous, successful people. He frames the book around his quest to reach them via the “third door”—neither over the transom nor personal connections, but via sheer persistence and audacity. In this way, he won access to such luminaries as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Tony Hsieh, and Steven Spielberg. While he covers a few lessons imparted by his interviewees, most of the book consists of stories of how he blustered his way into their offices. This work has little to offer to readers beyond a tribute to the author’s own chutzpah.

May 15, 2018
A teenager sets out to capture the world of celebrity success and becomes a famed one himself. After deciding how, exactly, to make his mark on the world, Los Angeles native Banayan needed money to make his book dream a reality. So he did what any entrepreneur would do: won merchandise on The Price Is Right. In an easy-breezy narrative, he chronicles his journey, from hooking up with Microsoft's Qi Lu (who built the Bing search engine) and being mentored by media mogul Elliott Bisnow to nabbing interviews with Larry King and Lady Gaga. With each conversation comes learning: Musician Pitbull, about the humbling of self; Larry King, the art of interviewing; Steve Wozniak, the redefinition of success; and more. All these stories establish and give credibility to his Third Door framework: avoid the main and VIP entrances and persist to find a different way into the situation. The most important door of all? That everyone has the power to make little choices that can alter their lives forever. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)