Persuasion and influence in American life Book

Reading this book will certainly do no harm - worst that can happen is you'll find an idea or two that you'll be able to put in practice and improve your persuasive skills. As such, I did not waste my time reading it and you won't either.

That having been said, I'll have to agree with some of the reviews here: I too have found the book rather basic and aimed at the very unexperienced reader wanting an intro to the subject. The two aspects I personally like the least are:
1) I think a book like this one would benefit from a much more in depth and cross- disciplinary review of seminal studies in psychology and behavioural science (and more) - although I appreciate that that would narrow the target audience significantly.

2) The sample dialogues used throughout the books seemed too fake to me, presenting an overly negative or postive scenario each time, both of which are hard to imagine in reality - although I appreciate that the author's aim here might be exactly to give the reader benchmarks at one or the other extreme.

The coffee breaks at the end of each chapter were good though: having to fill in the blanks definitely helped me memorise some of the key points more easily than usual.