Books about Manipulates from Amazon.com

"If you really loved me..."

"After all I've done for you..."

"How can you be so selfish .."

Do any of the above sound familiar? They're all examples of emotional blackmail, a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationships with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They are our mothers, our partners, our bosses and coworkers, our friends and our lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to give themselves the payoff they want: our compliance.

Susan Forward knows what pushes our hot buttons. Just as John Gray illuminates the communications gap between the sexes in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Harriet Lerner describes an intricate dynamic in The Dance of Anger, so Susan Forward presents the anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation, and gives readers an arsenal of tools to fight back. In her clear, no-nonsense style, Forward provides powerful, practical strategies for blackmail targets, including checklists, practice scenarios and concrete communications techniques that will strengthen relationships and break the blackmail cycle for good..
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Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action.

Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed.
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An investigative journalist examines how marketers exploit infants and toddlers and the broad, often shocking impact of that exploitation on our society

It's no secret that toy and media corporations manipulate the insecurities of parents to move their products, but Buy, Buy Baby unveils the chilling fact that these corporations are using -- and often funding -- the latest research in child development to sell directly to babies and toddlers. Susan Gregory Thomas offers even more unnerving epiphanies: the lack of evidence that "educational" shows and toys provide any educational benefit at all for young children and the growing evidence that some of these products actually impair early development and could harm our kids socially and cognitively for life.

Underlying these revelations is a dangerous economic and cultural shift: our kids are becoming consumers at alarmingly young ages and suffering all the ills that rampant materialism used to visit only on adults -- from anxiety to hypercompetitiveness to depression.

Thomas blends prodigious reportage with an empathetic voice. Her two daughters were toddlers while she wrote this book, and she never loses sight of the temporal and emotional challenges that parents face. She shows how we can help our kids live at their natural pace, not the frenetic clip that serves only the toddler-industrial complex. Buy, Buy Baby helps us fight the power marketers wield by exposing the false fears they spread..
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Gene Epstein knows a thing or two about economic data. Before becoming the Economics Editor for Barron's in 1993, he was a senior economist at the New York Stock Exchange Now in Econospinning, Epstein supplies readers with a book that attempts to cut through the veil of economic misinformation commonly reported in today's media.

Assuming no prior knowledge on the readers part, each chapter of Econospinning is structured around fairly simple propositions about the economy or about specific economic data—from tracking employment numbers to measuring corporate profitability—that are then contrasted with the distortions of today's media coverage.

Along the way, Epstein exposes bad reporting by the elite media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Economist—and especially by The New York Times and its economics columnist Paul Krugman,

Epstein also deconstructs CNN newscaster Lou Dobbs’ coverage of outsourcing and globalization; the illusory connection between abortion and lower crime rates, and bad theories about the role of real estate brokers, featured in the bestseller Freakonomics; the treatment of the working class portrayed in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed; and the sensationalized coverage of the employment report by CNBC’s "Squawk Box."

From the disputes over Social Security to misinterpretations of the unemployment rate, Econospinning points out the unfortunate lack of integrity that pervades mainstream economic reporting.

Gene Epstein (New York, NY) has been Barron's Economics Editor since 1993 and writes the column, "Economic Beat." A frequent speaker on the conference circuit, Epstein has been interviewed on CNBC, CNN, NJN Public TV, and BBC TV. He holds an MA in economics from the New School and a BA from Brandeis University..
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These days, you can't turn on a television without hearing that you're probably fat, engaged in unhealthy behavior, failing to get sufficient exercise, destroying the environment through the use of practically every product that makes your life more convenient, and likely to fall victim to just about everything and everyone around you. But not only are the statistics that prove these points based on false information, much of our national dialogue is dictated by this patently bad science-encouraged solely by public and private organizations that leverage these demonstrably untrue facts to bolster their own philosophies and fatten their own pocketbooks. With mounds of solid evidence that contradicts common thought, Morris Chafetz shows the lies behind the facts about today's big issues (for instance, the "obesity epidemic" we hear so much about is the result not of a fatter population but instead a change in bookkeeping in a federal agency, and the evidence used now to frighten us about "global warming" was used a generation ago to frighten us about "global cooling") and encourages readers to look through the money-motivated façade of statistics and government controls and return to a strong attitude of personal responsibility..
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Maps present one of the prickliest problems in U.S. politics The shape of congressional districts plays a gigantic role in the never-ending struggle between Democrats and Republicans. Draw the boundaries one way, and liberals have the upper hand. Shift them around a bit, and suddenly conservatives control the agenda. Gerrymandering is a constant threat every 10 years, when the states redraw their congressional districts based on fresh census information. The stakes are enormous, and abuse is almost a certainty. That's why Bushmanders and Bullwinkles is so welcome. "I want to make readers aware of how legislators, judges, and other elected officials use the decennial remap to promote personal or ideological agendas," writes Mark Monmonier. He succeeds at this gloriously--and just in time: redistricting will be a hot-button issue in the years ahead, as states draw their new maps in 2001 and 2002, the parties inevitably go to court in 2003, and finally the 2004 election shakeout arrives, with results that can reverberate for years. (Some analysts argue that redistricting explains why Republicans captured the House in 1994, for example.)

What's more, redistricting has never been more complicated. Monmonier walks readers through all the important controversies, paying special attention to the furor over majority-minority districts. He describes the paradox of the first Bush administration working with black and Hispanic groups to create these jurisdictions--on the theory that packing minority voters into overwhelmingly Democratic districts would dilute their influence elsewhere and thereby help elect more Republicans. The result was a surge in black and Hispanic members of Congress (a goal of the minority groups), plus gains for the GOP. Achieving this required sophisticated software, and resulted in messy, fractal-shaped districts.

This is an outstanding guide to these once and future controversies. It's also loaded with maps, which are essential to any understanding of the subject. For readers looking for a primer on this complex but vital and fascinating topic, there may be nothing better than Bushmanders and Bullwinkles. --John J. Miller.
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A series of essays, most previously published, giving Machiavellian analyses of American women's behavior intended to free men from misconceptions and enable them to evaluate women objectively, and to be the basis for an objective science of women called gynology..
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