An almost interesting book on the art of persuasion……    **

The subtitle of this book is “Persuasion in a world where facts don’t matter.” Adams might as well have called it “Why I like Trump.”

In the beginning Scott Adams states that the purpose of the book is to discuss persuasion techniques and to teach the reader how to recognize a Master Persuader. He uses Trump as an example and describes how Trump was able to go from celebrity to occupying the Oval Office.

The parts of the book where Adams discussed the various qualities of a good persuader and how they are able to accomplish what they set out to do is fascinating. Regardless of one’s politics, seeing how Trump used persuasion techniques helps to understand how he succeeded. In comparison, Adams shows how the Democrats failed in the art of persuasion. After having read about these techniques, it is easy to recognize them in the current political arena.

Had Adams stopped at the descriptions of persuasion and comparing both parties success or failure in implementing them, this might be a five star read. But in what read as an almost defensive apology, Adams ends the book trying to defend why he ended up verbally supporting Trump. He undermines his discussion of persuasion by revealing his paranoia of Hillary’s tax plan and his fear of Democratic bullies as reasoning for his decision. Ironically, he states he doesn’t vote.

There is a lot of repetition and self promoting that gets old after a point. Adams kept saying he would discuss further something he wrote later in the book, which I suppose was a persuasion technique of a carrot getting me to keep reading.

This one gets two stars, and is worth reading if you can filter out the unnecessary rhetoric.

An eye opening treatise and a must read…..  *****

This is a history lesson, a sobering view of the country we call the United States, and an eye-opening look into how a government can oppress a specific part of its population. Coates does an excellent job of describing the struggle and overt, as well as covert,  discrimination of blacks in this country.

There are too many events from black history in this book, that I had no idea about, to list. One that stood out to me was the way the GI bill, which provided low cost housing loans, was handled regarding black veterans. Because the local banks and cities were given the power to decide how the bill was implemented, they were able to deny loans to black veterans. Coates goes into this in great detail, so I won’t.

Coates shares the articles he wrote for The Atlantic, spanning the eight years of the Obama administration.  He introduces each essay with his comments in retrospect.

This is a must read and an unsettling view of this country. Sadly, it probably won’t be read by those that need to, and based on current attitudes I doubt it would change their minds anyway

This one gets five stars.