Recommended: Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter

Scott Adams, who is the author of the Dilbert cartoons among other things, won fame or notoriety (depending on your outlook) for predicting, beginning 18 or so months before the election, contrary to almost all other pollsters and political experts, that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination and that he would win the election. Adams was not a Trump supporter (nor was he a Clinton supporter), but he did perceive that Trump had extraordinary persuasion skills. Persuasion skills are a field Adams has studied for years, and coincidentally that he uses to make his Dilbert cartoons seem so universal.

This is a book in which Adams seeks to explain the persuasion techniques that Trump, and eventually Clinton as well, used in the campaign, and why Hillary’s mostly didn’t work and Trump’s mostly did. If you are emotionally committed to believing that humans are mostly rational, you won’t like this book. If you are emotionally committed to believing Trump is an idiot (and turned his father’s million dollar loan into 3.8 billion dollars just by luck, and beat both the Republican and the Democratic establishment to win the election just by luck), you won’t like this book. If, on the other hand, you would like to learn about the persuasion techniques that are being used on all of us every day by astute politicians, marketers, advertisers and salespeople, and that probably won Trump the election, this is a great place to start.