THE Art OF Manipulation

HAVE YOU WONDERED why some people nearly always get what they want from other people, while you can only manage to do so every now and then? I certainly have, and that question had badgered me for years. Why can one person close the big business deal where ninety-five percent of the people who tried have failed? Why can some men charm and manipu_x0002_late women into almost anything, when others couldn't get the time of day from them? Why do cer_x0002_I 2 THE ART OF MANIPULATION tain women seem to get anything they want from men? Surely it comes down to the fact that these people are shrewd in the art of manipulating and han_x0002_dling people. But how do they do it? What are their techniques? As an answer, this book reports the tactics these manipulators use to get what they want in business situations as well as in their personal lives-much of it in their own words. And it's all tried-and-true street wisdom, not the kind of thing you customarily read in books. As a result, you'll find it natural to put these tactics to work getting what you want from people. They're more comfortable in action, anyway, than they are lying dormant on the written page. The sole criterion: Does it work? Any method I report here can be judged by only one criterion: Does it work well enough to get me what I want? These tactics need not be moral, inspir_x0002_ing, or philosophically sound. They just have to work. Otherwise the manipulators who tutored me in the art of "people-handling" would have long ago dis_x0002_carded them. What remains is the distilled street wis_x0002_dom of people who either prospered or starved according to their ability to persuade others against their will. I believe their straight-from-the-jungle techniques will work better for you than the ivory tower, armchair theorizing done by most books on the subject. Necessity forced me to turn to some rather unorth- FIVE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE 3 odox characters as sources for this book on manipula_x0002_tion. I'd already exhausted the more respectable alternatives by taking a master's degree in advertis_x0002_ing. But studying Madison Avenue's methods in de_x0002_tail taught me very little. I found that depending on college and books to teach me how to handle people was like going to church to learn how to sin. They just didn't seem to know much about it. Not until I put myself square in the middle of street-wise hustlers, manipulators, and con artists did I gain a working grasp of manipulation. In the pro_x0002_cess my shady tutors conned me out of considerable money. But I emerged after a year well versed in the art of extracting what I want from people. Learning the art Manipulators and con artists flock to boom town.