Lapham's Rules of Influence A Careerist's Guide to Success, Status, and Self-Co

by Lewis H. Lapham

Want to get ahead in the world? To be a player, rather than a ticket holder? A mover and a shaker, rather than the moved or shaken? Lewis Lapham has a Suck up, then suck up some more, and when you're finished with that, try to arrange a dinner with more people you can suck up to. Lapham, the iconoclastic editor of Harper's Magazine, argues that brownnosing has a long tradition in America, and quotes no less a source than Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1831 was shocked to find that the "courtier spirit" was alive and well in the rough-and-tumble American democracy. The advice you'll find in Rules of Influence drips with acid, which you'd expect if you read any of Lapham's columns in Harper's, for which he won a National Magazine Award in 1995. But even in the sarcasm, one can find surprisingly practical advice. For example, he notes that "[t]oo much curiosity is a mark of inferior rank. You will be mistaken for a tourist or a waiter" if you ask too many questions. He also notes that the limelight is "[n]ot a safe place.... Too steep an ascent into the atmospheres of fame invites a correspondingly steep descent into the base camp of anonymity." If only Elizabeth Berkley could have read this book before she did Showgirls! --Lou Schuler

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Humor, Social Commentary

Hardcover

First published May 18, 1999

About the author

Lewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.

Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/

Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I put this under non-fiction, but really, it is a satire on the upper classes. Looks at American society, but really, the lessons in this book apply anywhere.

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent sardonic advice for the careerist in development!

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t know whether you read Lapham’s columns in Harper’s, but this is a short distillation of most of the points he’s made about the new upper classes in the past ten years — a tongue-in-cheek Emily Post.

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lapham is quite pissed at the direction that the American "power system" (for lack of a better term) seems to be heading nowadays and sarcasm is his weapon of choice in this little expose.

[Amanda Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very funny and very true.