Slapped Together: The Dilbert Business Anthology

by Scott Adams

The books are a hilarious light read with some good information sprinkled in the mix. You're really not going to get any deep insights, but you're getting more real life business information than you would from the Dilbert comics. Individually, the books are relatively short with plenty of spacing, largish font, Dilbert comics strewn about, and emails/letters from people that generally tell humorous stories. In other words, there's plenty of filler, but it's not necessarily a bad thing in a light read like this. Together, the books add up to a very decent length.

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Business, Comics, Comedy

874 pages, Hardcover

First published September 6, 2002

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Scott Adams was a defining voice of the American white-collar experience who transitioned from a prominent cartoonist into a polarizing political commentator. After earning an MBA from UC Berkeley and spending years in management at Pacific Bell, Adams launched the comic strip Dilbert in 1989. The strip’s sharp satire of corporate bureaucracy and the "Dilbert Principle"—the idea that incompetent employees are promoted to management to minimize their damage—resonated globally, eventually appearing in 2,000 newspapers and winning the prestigious Reuben Award. Beyond the funny pages, Adams explored philosophy and persuasion in works like God's Debris and Win Bigly, the latter of which analyzed Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategies during the 2016 election. His career took a dramatic turn during the mid-2010s as he shifted focus to his daily "Real Coffee" livestream, where he combined his background in hypnosis and corporate strategy to comment on the "culture wars." This period of independent commentary culminated in 2023 when he reacted to a poll regarding racial tensions with a series of inflammatory remarks. Labeling Black Americans a "hate group" and advocating for racial segregation, Adams faced immediate and widespread repercussions; hundreds of newspapers dropped his strip, and his publisher canceled his upcoming projects. Undeterred, he moved his work to the subscription-based platform Locals, rebranding his comic as Dilbert Reborn. In his final years, he faced severe health challenges, including stage IV prostate cancer and vocal cord issues, yet he remained a prolific presence on social media. He eventually announced the end of his hand-drawn work due to focal dystonia but continued to direct the strip's vision. Adams’s legacy remains a complex study in the power of branding, the evolution of digital influence, and the volatile intersection of creative genius and political provocation in the modern era.

Reviews

[Kendal · Rating 3 out of 5]

An omnibus of The Dilbert Principle, The Dilbert Future, and The Joy of Work. More bang for your buck. Oddly enough, his appendices/later chapters on OA5, affirmations, and his philosophy on humor are his best work.

Plus, these books are a fun 1990s time machine, written in the era of cubicles, PDAs, and when the internet was The Next Big Thing.

Before the Dot-Com Bust.

[Brian Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, an enjoyable and humurous book from Scott Adams. I always enjoy his strips and his books. It took me a while to read it, though, because it's really three books in one and it's kind of overloading reading one after the other. So I mixed it up. But, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It's fun to make fun of people. Usually.

[lynne fireheart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tere seems to be a pattern to these three books: filled with amusing 'toons and texts (that get old FAST)... but the final chapter is a serious one, whether it's the "Out At 5" concept, or daily affirmations.