mystery is an aspiring Toronto magician who charges $2,250 for a weekend pickup workshop. He is not much to look at: a cross between a vampire and a computer geek. But by using high-powered marketing techniques he's turned seduction into an effortless craft--even inventing his own vocabulary. His technique sounds like a car salesman's tip sheet: his main rule is FMAC--find, meet, attract, close. He employs the "three-second rule"--always approach a woman within three seconds of first seeing her in order to avoid getting shy. Other tricks: Intrigue a beautiful woman by pretending to be unaffected by her charm; also, never hit on a woman right away. Start with a disarming, innocent remark, like "Do you think magic spells work?" or "Oh my god, did you see those two girls fighting outside?" And finally, the most important characteristic of the pickup artist--smile.

After two years, Strauss ends up becoming almost as successful as Mystery, but he comes to an important realization. His techniques were actually off-putting to the woman he ended up falling in love with. And they never prepared him for actually having a relationship. After a while, he ran out of one-liners and had to have a real conversation. Still, The Game is a great read that may help some AFCs come out of their shells. --Alex Roslin

From Publishers Weekly
[Signature]Reviewed by Amy SohnI never dated Neil Strauss, but I dated guys like him. Like many New York women, I have always gone for balding, pale guys because they're grateful and good in bed. But a few years ago, a distraught Strauss decided he was a loser with women and set about transforming himself into the world's greatest pick-up artist. The Game is his long, often tedious but hilarious account of how he did it. This ugly-duckling tale will affect different readers in different ways, depending on their degree of cynicism: some will be awed by Strauss's ménage-à-trois snowball scene, while others will suspect it was cribbed from a third-rate porno Strauss watched in his pre-macking days.When his story begins Strauss is, well, a Neil: an unconfident, self-described AFC (average frustrated chump). He is also, it should be noted, a well-known rock critic who penned porn star Jenna Jameson's autobiography, leaving one wondering just how pathetic women really found him. After paying $500 to join a workshop for aspiring PUAs (pick-up artists) led by a magician named mystery at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, Strauss becomes addicted to pick-up technique. He trains with several PUA gurus, including Ross Jeffries, a hypnotist rumored to be the basis for the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia. With his brains and dedication, Strauss renames himself Style and soon becomes a master of the game—able to get sex from beautiful women who once would have run the other way.But The Game doesn't get really interesting until Strauss deviates from his NC-17 Horatio Alger story and tells what happens when he moves into a Sunset Strip mansion with a group of other PUAs. He starts to see the misogyny of the sport and realizes that most of its leaders had miserable childhoods. The AFC who became a PUA to understand women ultimately becomes an expert on men.As Strauss grows restless to talk about things other than number closes and phase shifts (the book's glossary is a juicy read of its own), the mansion loses its appeal and he reluctantly grows up. When he meets a tough-talking band mate of Courtney Love's named Lisa and they bond over music, we can guess where the narrative is headed. In the book's final pages, he dumps onto his bed all the phone numbers he's collected and tells Lisa, "I've spent two years meeting every girl in L.A. And out of them all, I chose you," which is like telling your mother-in-law that the Thanksgiving dinner you had last year at Applebee's was nothing compared to the one she just prepared. But for some reason, Lisa doesn't flee. I can only hope that in the inevitable 2007 movie version, starring Jack Black and Kate Hudson, Lisa throws the numbers in his face and leaves him for a guy who knows how to pay a girl a compliment. (Sept. 1)Amy Sohn is the author of My Old Man, which was just released in paperback by Simon & Schuster, and she writes the "Mating" column for New York magazine.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium.
Copyright 2003 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.

Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
The premise of this facile piece of pop sociology has built-in appeal: little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell's thesis that ideas, products, messages and behaviors "spread just like viruses do" remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of "word-of-mouth epidemics" triggered with the help of three pivotal types. These are Connectors, sociable personalities who bring people together; Mavens, who like to pass along knowledge; and Salesmen, adept at persuading the unenlightened. (Paul Revere, for example, was a Maven and a Connector). Gladwell's applications of his "tipping point" concept to current phenomena--such as the drop in violent crime in New York, the rebirth of Hush Puppies suede shoes as a suburban mall favorite, teenage suicide patterns and the efficiency of small work units--may arouse controversy. For example, many parents may be alarmed at his advice on drugs: since teenagers' experimentation with drugs, including cocaine, seldom leads to hardcore use, he contends, "We have to stop fighting this kind of experimentation. We have to accept it and even embrace it." While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets summarizing research on topics such as conversational patterns, infants' crib talk, judging other people's character, cheating habits in schoolchildren, memory sharing among families or couples, and the dehumanizing effects of prisons, this volume betrays its roots as a series of articles for the New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form. Agent, Tina Bennett of Janklow & Nesbit. Major ad/promo. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

His analysis is depressing but quite readable -- thanks largely to his skill in giving lively names and conceptual handles to his explanations for why the West's charitable works in fact accomplish "so much ill and so little good." The do-gooders' fundamental flaw, he argues, is that they are "Planners," who seek to impose solutions from the top down, rather than "Searchers," who adapt to the real life and culture of foreign lands from the bottom up. The Planners believe in "the Big Push" -- an infusion of foreign aid and economic advice that will lift poor countries past the poverty trap and into prosperity. But the Planners are almost always wrong, Easterly contends, because they ignore the cultural, political and bureaucratic obstacles that impede the delivery of real assistance (as opposed to plans for such assistance) to the world's poor. "The right plan is to have no plan," he asserts, in an economist's version of a Zen koan.

Think of Easterly as a kind of anti-Thomas L. Friedman. His dyspeptic view of globalization contrasts with the optimism of the New York Times columnist, but he has written his broadside in a brisk, Friedman-esque style of aphorisms, anecdotes and witty headings. Some of his section and chapter titles convey the breezy tone in which he delivers his gloomy analysis: "Why Planners Cannot Bring Prosperity"; "The Legend of the Big Push"; "The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats." Scattered throughout the book are upbeat "Snapshots" of poor Africans and Asians whom Easterly, now an economics professor at New York University, met on his travels during more than 16 years spent working as a World Bank development economist; he also offers portraits of the "Searchers" who are helping the developing world.

I confess that I occasionally began to find all the aphorisms and snapshots annoying; there actually is such a thing as a book about development economics that is too readable. And I would have been happier if his sainted Searchers had been subject to a bit more of the same skepticism that Easterly applies to the odious Planners. Not to diminish the "social entrepreneurs" whom Easterly celebrates, but their well-publicized efforts are a bit of a racket too. I've met with and marveled at some of the same African and Asian innovators Easterly applauds, but it is a tad utopian to think that these little examples will add up to big changes, absent the fundamental reforms for which Easterly has such scorn. For instance, he praises the success of an NGO called Population Services International in finding a way for poor Africans to make a profit distributing the bed nets that can prevent malaria. But surely the challenge for development economists is to find ways to replicate such efforts on a larger scale, which involves the dreaded "P" word.

What makes this book valuable is its devastating detail. Easterly, the author of an influential previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, has assembled overwhelming evidence of how little has been accomplished with the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid money, the thousands of advisory missions, the millions of reports and studies. Rebutting the "Big Push" idea favored by World Bank planners, he notes that 22 African countries spent $342 billion on public investment from 1970 to 1994 and received another $187 billion in foreign aid over that period. But the productivity gain from all this investment was zero. As an example of the Planners' folly, he cites the $5 billion spent since 1979 on a publicly owned steel mill in Nigeria that has yet to produce any steel.

Easterly's critique of the World Bank and the IMF is persuasive. He argues that the IMF's structural-adjustment lending -- in which indebted countries get more money on the condition that they agree to Planners' free-market reforms -- simply hasn't worked. One big reason is that the IMF, like the World Bank, is always fudging its failures, finding excuses for why past aid and advice haven't worked, discovering reasons to pump in even more assistance. Indeed, Easterly finds a freakish correlation between IMF interventions and failed states. He notes the role corruption has played in distorting foreign aid and the growing insistence of aid donors on "good governance." But he cautions that attempting to change political cultures from afar often produces a show of good governance -- like the 2,400 reports Tanzania must produce every year for aid donors -- rather than the real thing. The absurdity of this hortatory culture emerges in his observation that among the 185 actions recommended by the 2002 Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development was "efficient use of cow dung."

With all of Easterly's aid-bashing, one might imagine that he is a conservative promoter of market solutions. But some of his most powerful criticism is reserved for the Planners who advocated "shock therapy" free-market reforms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Free markets can't be imposed from outside, he insists, citing the example of the inefficient Soviet-era plants that survived their entry into the market era via their communist bosses' genius for bartering and cronyism. "The Soviet-trained plant managers at the bottom outwitted the shock therapists at the top," he writes. He finds a similar failure of free-market diktats in Latin America. The best era for Latin American growth was 1950 to 1980, the heyday of state intervention, while growth slowed in the market-reform years of the 1990s. As a result, Easterly argues, "the backlash against free markets is unfortunately now gaining strength in Latin America."

So what works? Easterly's argument is that if it's imposed from the outside, almost nothing works -- in either the economic or political sphere. It's no accident, he argues, that the great East Asian economic success stories of recent decades -- Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand -- all took place in countries that were never successfully colonized by the West. These nations evolved their own cultures, rules and disciplines and built an indigenous foundation for rapid economic growth. The region's laggard is the one nation that was colonized: the Philippines.

Easterly's dissection of the interventionist impulse of the Planners is powerful. His enthusiasm for the bottom-up successes of the Searchers is less so. He's looking hard for something encouraging to say, but it's a measure of the potency of his corrosive analysis that the good news isn't very convincing.

Reviewed by David Ignatius
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Sherry Argov’s Why Men Love Bitches delivers a unique perspective as to why men are attracted to a strong woman who stands up for herself. With saucy detail on every page, this no-nonsense guide reveals why a strong woman is much more desirable than a "yes woman" who routinely sacrifices herself. The author provides compelling answers to the tough questions women often ask:

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Full of much-needed advice, hilarious real-life relationship scenarios, "she says/he thinks" tables, and the author’s unique "Attraction Principles," Why Men Love Bitches gives you bottom-line answers. It helps you know who you are, stand your ground, and relate to men on a whole new level. Once you’ve discovered the feisty attitude men find so magnetic, you’ll not only increase the romantic chemistry in the relationship-you’ll gain your man’s love and respect with far less effort.