This book tries to tell you how to get ahead by lying to people. It keeps telling you how powerful you'll be if only you follow its advice; it tells you that people who try to be "nice" are doomed to failure and blah blah blah. As an engineer who hangs out with mad scientists, I was not impressed. This book pretends that "power" == "power over gullible humans". That's fine if you want to be surrounded by minions peeling your grapes for you or whatever. But what if you want an instant pretty-good translation of some document written in a language you don't know? Too bad you wasted all that time dominating humans instead of using science and engineering to bend a fleet of computers to your will.
(This book claims that my fondness for science and technology indicates my blindness: scientists can't ignore politics. Galileo had to flatter nobles to get money to do research; when he tried to ignore politics, he got in trouble. But the book also overvalues having power over people. Anyone who's tried to explain a complex product specification to an underling and then sees what that underling builds, oy veh, knows what I'm getting at here.)
Did not finish
