Once upon a time, in a world not too far away, where illusions were thicker than the fog of Milan and paper dreams crumpled at the first breath of wind, a character that everyone called Giangini. Funny in appearance, with the look of someone who had chewed a little too much spitting tobacco and just as many indigestible truths, Giangini took to the stage like an impertinent elf.

His words were stoned, his speeches lashed with irony, and his motto was as clear and merciless as a glass of ice water in the face: "You are poor because you are poor. "Giangini was not afraid of hurting feelings, of shaking slumbering souls, of awakening spirits dormant in the tombs of mediocrity.

His voice, a mixture of scratchy sandpaper and the shrill melody of an out-of-tune accordion, echoed in the rooms packed with men and women with wide eyes and pricked ears, ready to be struck by his raw and unmistakable truth. But who was Giangini really? An economic wizard? A prophet of motivation? A luxury charlatan? Maybe a little of all this, or maybe none of this.

He was a man who understood something fundamental: poverty, before being a material condition, is a mental state. And in the world of broken dreams and withered hopes, his message rang like an alarm clock in a dormitory of chronically lazy people.

This book is not an economics manual, nor a philosophical treatise. It is a collection of stories, mockeries, provocations, a journey into the human soul with the aim of making you think, laugh and, why not, get angry.

It is our dirty mirror, reflecting the truths we don't want to see, the excuses we tell ourselves every day, the invisible chains that bind us to a life of mediocrity. Read it with an open heart, with a mind ready to be stimulated, with the desire to truly change.

Because, in the end, as Giangini would say with his sly smile and his scratchy voice: "You are poor because you are poor. But if you open your eyes, if you shake off the dust of your broken dreams, if you decide to get up and walk, maybe , and I mean maybe, you may discover that you are not as poor as you thought.

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