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The Art of Seduction | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy New: $9.62
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Avg. Customer Rating:  234 reviews
Sales Rank: 1402
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 467
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0142001198
Dewey Decimal Number: 155
EAN: 9780142001196
ASIN: 0142001198
Publication Date: October 7, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: A20081126105130W
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Product Description
This mesmerizing exploration of the most subtle, elusive, and effective form of power is a masterful analysis of civilization's greatest seducers, from Cleopatra to JFK, as well as the classic literature of seduction from Freud to Kierkegaard and Ovid to Casanova. Robert Greene once again identifies the rules of a timeless, amoral game and explores how to cast a spell, break down resistance, and, ultimately, compel a target to surrender. Presenting the timeless profiles of each type of seducer and the twenty-four maneuvers that will guide you step by step in the game of seduction, The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer of persuasion that reveals the timeless power of this age-old art.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 229 more reviews...
 Not a "How-To" manual... October 24, 2008
But a great book none-the-less. There is a great deal of "take away" but you have to work for it. Otherwise, the historical references are very engrossing. I bought this in conjuction with Secrets of the A Game and The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists - all have been helpful.
Don't read as a "how to" book October 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this book a while back. I didn't read it because I wanted to know "how to seduce" my sexual interests. I read it for curiosity of what this author had to actually say. The stories and examples were interesting as well as the psychology of the book. It does a well job of classifying certain characteristics of people and it helped me become more tolerant of different personalities and reponses that usually don't coincide with my own. I also found that at the end of reading this book, it isn't a step by step guide how to seduce someone, but you feel with the knowledge you have acquired, more confident and brave to want to seduce so to speak your love interest. I felt like I could relate to a little bit of each character in the book. It made me take pride in my own thinking and actions. A reaffirmation that everyone handles situations differently. Yet they can all be effective. Just don't read for literal use.
Excellent Stuff!! October 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Simply an amazing book about the subject of great seduction. If you are vaguely interested in approving your social skills, or aim for some kind of targeted success in human interaction, this would be a defintive book for you to read. Its a big book, but as Robert Greene takes along the historical learning path to seduction, you will enjoy the ride!
I am a victim. This is a dangerous book. Everybody should read it. October 5, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I am a self-confident, self-motivated, self-directed individual who pretty much knows exactly what to do and when to do things to get the preferred results. I am a smiling, friendly and mostly a charismatic person. At least that's how I used to be before I met this girl in my Freshman composition class.
She was very attractive and I fell in love with her. She exercised the seduction techniques mentioned in this book (such as stirring interest indirectly, creting triangles, getting close to me and giving the impression of like-mindedness etc) to make that happen and it came to a point where I was fantasizing her with me in her life. She was all that I was thinking of. I was losing grip over my life. I somehow became dependent of her. She then started coquetting and withdrawing herself. I gradually started losing my self-esteem and I was no more that charismatic person with self-confidence and self-esteem. I was doing things that she thought would ultimately would lead to our mutual pleasure...but it only made both of us empty.
Finally, one day she drove me to a isolated forest...and I thought she was going to have us do something pleasurable (finally). She just asked me to step out of the car and handed some papers and got in her car and left me there stranded. I was devastated. I started reading the papers. It was titled "The Seduction of ". It started with a character map of me...everything that she had observed about me, my weaknesses, what gave me my self-confidence etc. Then there were list of steps, almost like a manual, that described how she seduced me step-by-step. Then there were extracts from personal journal entries that described how, initially when we'd first met, she admired my quality of self-confidence and how much she wanted to have control over someone like me...primarily because of her own lack of it...and how over time she got bored of playing me like an instrument and how predictable I became etc. She didn't enjoy me anymore. So, she decided to dump me in the middle of the forest with this fact sheet. I was lying on the ground there crying my lungs out to death with limbs too weak to move. I completely lost my self-esteem and was at a point where I wanted her to accept me as her slave and was honoured by that thought. I couldn't even look up at people's faces anymore. This is the worst form of exploitation there exists. It almost feels like being eaten alive by insects from the inside and not being able to do anything about it.
Few days after this devastation, I googled and found this book. I read it and it revealed to me how someone as intellectually incompetent as herself could do something as vicious as this. It made me feel a lot better to know how exactly the worst thing ever to happen in my life happened. Now I feel that everybody should read this book...just to avoid being exploited in this way, if not for anything else.
Cautionary notes:-
As for those of you who were inspired by the cinematic quality of what happened to me and are motivated to use the techniques mentioned in the book to drain admirable qualities off someone for self-gratification, I have to warn you by letting you know why she even had to dump me like that. She, after reading the book, had to condition herself against expressing any genuine emotions and had to perfect the impression of genuineness of her made up emotions. She conceded in one of her later personal journal entries that she was in a sort of psychological trap. She started having trouble doing even simple things such as expressing genuine awe or even anger. She always felt the need to go by the rules. It made her less of a real human being and more of an imitation of an admirable human being. When I recently contacted her, she said she needs professional help because she is very confused in discerning emotions that come from within and those that are just made up. Shes messed up.
As for the testimonials of these admirable people (who practice the art of seduction) thrown around in Greenes book, I have to inform you that those people are genuine human beings with natural seductive mannerisms. The most dangerous aspect of this book is Greenes portrayal of them as people who calculated their behavior and that ability to calculate behavior as being admirable. It inspires people to look at themselves and their naturally arising feelings with belittling eyes and to try to become these admirable people with admirable statistics. It also inspires them to lower the value for their genuine emotions. In my erudite opinion, focusing on your behavior and trying to adjust it using the feedback it receives from outside rather than using ones judgment from within leads to termination of personal growth. If youre so desperate to have a reputable history of conquests when youre older as to compromise on investment in your personal growth and true exploration of human relations, then go ahead and seduce people into falling in love with you for all the wrong reasonsand become an imitation. Remember that unforeseen pleasures are often the most gratifying.
Psychological nuclear energy October 4, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
As its more tangible counterpart, this information can destroy or sustain. From one standpoint I am just glad to have a pretty well organized blueprint of human actions: a lens through which I can categorize things I see. Personally, I intend to take it no further than to add some spice to certain relationships (and to wary myself against manipulative behavior): a pretty narrow application, I admit, but I'd have paid far more than $10 to get this information.
To whom does the book apply?
Seduction is a very general term. In that sense everybody needs to know more about, or how to defend against it because you WILL be seduced at several points in your life and it is likely that at least one of those events will significantly alter your future. HOWEVER, the book itself is far too corrupting for some reader groups, and a pretty obvious subject is divulged in far more than others. Definitely, as far as teens are concerned I wouldn't have them read this directly - but in the hands of a concerned parent or someone who can see beyond the sexual overtones, or maybe even use them beneficially in their marriage {though I can imagine ruined relationships due to too brusque experimentation} it CAN {and that's really the operative word here} give you insights into the human psyche like few books you're likely to read: if you choose to, you can spend minutes meditating on each page and even more trying to link a chain between various parts of the book to a particular situation in your life. IMO, there's that much good content.
I've read my share of books: just finishing a very good 'The World is Flat', but 'The Art of Seduction' is the first that I consider a member of the 'red hot' category: my highest tier of books, to which I have not yet added one. What sets it apart from 'sequential books' that are unable to escape their content is that it provides a solid informational foundation for the thought process it instigates. That framework to me is the most valuable contribution - even if the author, and certainly some of the reviewers who got stuck on 'this book is bad because it advocates this, or that' only intended or noticed a prescribed linear applicative methodology.
There are those who, in regards to 'The Art of Seduction,' aim to
a) get too much ...
The book itself, is massive, and overwhelming - lives of famous lovers and courtesans cover only a few pages each, and the fascinating lifestyle can make the gullible experiment with things they're not ready for - indeed no one person embodies the full raucousness enclosed, but it is alluring to try to grasp it all as a reader.
b) get too little ...
To treat it as a 20th or 21st century self-help book, where the main effort expounded is in the uncovering of the procedure by the author, misses the point.
What this is, is a very interesting and well-expressed beginner/intermediate course in psychology whose practicability depends on how much you want to meditate and use to unlock certain aspects of your life: how much you get out of it depends far more on YOU than other texts. It will require a lot more imagination because the real deep learning in this scenario many times cannot be 1-to-1 applied (few are likely to live even one or two of the circumstances described, but one can definitely learn from EACH) - I believe this lack of perception is the motive for some of the negative reviews, though some of the positives probably equidistantly veer in the opposite direction (a shallow fascination with the admittedly very interesting and well narrated anecdotes.)
So for all those who want a 1-2-3 book to picking up a 36-24-36 chick, look elsewhere and spare a good literary work your equally-weighted terrible reviews. As James discovered, 'This is not much of a self-help.' Shattered expectations, however, are not equivalent to bad content.
[Self-help books are the 'cheat-sheets' for life, but Casanova didn't have a step by step program for wooing women. Knowledge and insight generate actions when inflexible techniques fall short. They both have their uses however, particularly with self-help books helping to add a focus to the 'how' that they 'why' books sometimes lack]
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