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Title: "How to be a perfect phony" would have been a more honest title
Review: ... and I thought Facebook was the main example of misuse of the word "friend".Great book to teach you how to feign empathy and pretend to care about people in order to be successful in your career while subtly worsening yourself as a human being. At least it can make you laugh now and then, as some advice is so blatantly phony. This is a book about manipulating people while doing your best to make them feel they are not being manipulated. (So, the words "influence people" in the title are quite apt.) It confuses appearances with substance, and it constantly misuses the term "genuine". "Be genuinely interested in people's problems" is meaningless advice. "Genuine" cannot be taught. You either are genuine or are not. The only thing you can teach is to *pretend* to be "genuinely" interested in people.The one point I'd give this book is that if you utterly lack any kind of basic social skills, it will at least teach you one or two.
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