Influence by Robert B Cialdini

 How do people try to influence you do to something?  In this book Cialdini goes over seven ways influence "ninjas" try get you to do what they want: Reciprocation, Commitment, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, Scarcity, and Unity.  He gives lots of examples of each principle, most of them involving scammers who are using the techniques maliciously.  He also gives advice how to recognize and avoid such tactics. 

I must admit I picked up this book hoping it would give me advice on how to influence people to do positive things, like support my library, not how to scam people. Also, as I read it I realized that most of the book was written decades ago. He added a chapter at the end about influence and computers, but even that was written eight years ago.  A lot of his ideas are timeless, and apply as much as they ever did, but the internet has changed the tactics of would-be scammers. It has even changed vocabulary.  "Liking" has a totally different meaning than it did in 1984.  I am glad I read it, since I think it is something of a classic, but I was disappointed that the "updated" version was not really very updated. (2016 ed, 336 p)