Lapham's Rules of Influence: A Careerist's Guide to Success, Status, and Self-Congratulation
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 formula: 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 ofHarper'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 inRules of Influencedrips with acid, which you'd expect if you read any of Lapham's columns inHarper'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 didShowgirls!--Lou Schuler