Financial Literacy for All: Disrupting Struggle, Advancing Financial Freedom, and Building a New American Middle Class

by John Hope Bryant

224 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2025

About the author

John Hope Bryant is an entrepreneur, author, advisor, and one of the nation’s most recognized empowerment leaders. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, and, as the author of Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey– Bass, 2009), is the only African-American best-selling business author in America. Mr. Bryant serves for President Barack Obama as chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment.

Mr. Bryant is the cofounder of the Gallup– HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the United States. He also is a cofounder of Global Dignity, with Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum.

Mr. Bryant is a thought leader represented by the Bright- Sight Group for public speaking and serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE), a specialty finance company managed by an affiliate of Ares Management LLC, a global alternative asset manager with approximately $59 billion in committed capital under management as of December 31, 2012.

Reviews

[David Bath · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book talks a lot about nothing. Best way to describe it is your typical high school paper where you stuff a lot of fluff into it to meet the word count.

The book offers nothing of value in terms of education you can take for yourself and use. It is more so an advertisement for their group Operation HOPE and nothing more. They talk about how important it is for everyone to know about financial literacy and why we need it and what we can do to get it in schools but offers nothing to teach you about financial literacy at all. Again its just an advertisement, in my opinion, for their organization and why we need to push for financial literacy.

The book is also racially charged. They want to make a point that it's not about race as everyone needs financial literacy but still pushes the narrative of minorities and women being hurt the most when they specifically say this would be good for all and race shouldn't matter. Also promoting the false claim of the gender pay gap in the process.

The author likes to also add a bit of an autobiography at the very beginning which, in my opinion, seems very far fetched as they mention he, the author, was 10 years old when he had a business next to a liquor store and ran them out of business...

Overall I was looking for a book to learn and teach myself about financial literacy and what I could do to better improve myself, learn something new, and hopefully start towards some better habits. This book offers none of that, so for me, it was a waste of time and money and not very enjoyable of a read.

Recommend you avoid this book especially if you are looking to improve yourself or understanding of the topic.

[breann wolfe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got to chapter 6 in this book, then skipped around to see if it have any value of educational information...it did not.
It was the biggest waste of time as an education book for financial literacy. Its more of autobiography for John Bryant as well as him saying everything thats wrong with the financial system and prompting his foundation HOPE. However, there is no real information to help anyone advance their financial literacy except for people to go to his HOPE foundation. this book is also very much geared towards one race of people as if there is only one race that makes up the middle class. He has some good lines but no advice that could be helpful. I would not suggest to purchase this book unless you would like to read an autobiography. I ended up tossing mine in the trash since I had written in the margins.

[Jae Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book primarily appeals to people who are interested in the issues of financial literacy and how to address them rather than people looking to learn practical steps towards becoming more financially literate. It’s a good appeal to why financial literacy it’s important and how we can increase it as concerned community members, government workers, etc, but less about the steps to take as an individual. Once you know that, you can better manage your expectations because it wasn’t what I originally expected.

[Eva Magaña · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was more focused on sharing personal stories and examples of wealth disparity and how we got here then how to go about resolving it. They discuss Operation HOPE, a non-profit organization improving financial literacy and how to get involved and support the program. I did not gain any knowledge from the book which is why I gave it one star.