Is This Book Under Titled?

When you peruse the clogged bookshelves to today’s book stores, you have to wonder about some of the titles. Certainly, that section of Help-For and How-To titles can shock, even awe, in the way they seem to identify a number of problems we didn't know we had, then go the next step in claiming to solve them, magically, dramatically, immediately.

For example, can a book titled something about "Whatever Subject For Dummies” really deliver the goods? On practical subjects (how to fly fish, how to write HTML code, etc.) I believe they really can do so.

Would a book on How to be Powerful and Influential For Dummies be something worth buying? I’d say NOT, certainly not having read Mr. Dilenschneider’s book. This isn't practical advice, it's life-altering attitudes and style, even personal values. These can't be "dummied up" for readers. They require thought and understanding.

Why not a popular Dummies subject? Because he really does deliver the message, but subtlely in ways not obvious on first reading. Dummies books cut through the fog to a core of actions. This book captures the fog, while clarifying personal, attainable goals and concepts. These don't travel well in quickie how-to books. They take work.

First, unlike the Dummies books, he REALLY HAS stood alongside and spoken candidly with many of the world’s movers and shakers. I'd guess that most of the Dummies books were written no so much by experts, but by expert researchers of existing literature. They're written by smooth, professional writers.

Mr. Dilenschneider, it's obvious from page one, IS AN EXPERT and a LIVING, BREATHING EXAMPLE of the powerful and influential who've thought a lot about the rules changing out from under his best efforts.

He discloses these discussions in a candid and elegant way that both communications and shares ideas, without bragging or making lists, the crutch of the Dummies books. List something and you have another couple of pages in those books.

Instead, Mr. Dilenschneider takes the high and sophisticated road, leaving it to readers to sort out the meaning and digest the concepts. It’s the implementation of these somewhat controversial ideas (not everyone agrees) that becomes tricky. And, clearly, not everyone truly is meant to be powerful and influential, I’m sorry. But EVERYONE can certainly learn WHY they can’t be a mega-person, since they may or may not WANT to try his recommendations or, frankly, be incapable of doing so.

Specifically, some people are just not capable of adopting and accepting today’s technologies, a key ingredient in Mr. Dilenschneider’s book. We all know them - - people, who even today, refuse to turn on a computer and use it’s capabilities, those of the Internet, and those of organizing one’s life’s work and hobbies. The number of these individuals is shrinking, but there’s still a hard core of non-computer users (and angrily proud of it - - I have “my people” handle those sorts of details, many say in the business world). (This does NOT mean that if you still can't figure out how to send a "text message" to and from your cellular phone that you don't have a grasp on technology. Just not its nuances. You do still use the phone and email from your laptop or desktop quite happily.) You fully grasp the emmense power of a few words well written and instantly delivered in an email

These non-technofiles oftentimes refuse to use cell phones, Blackberries and similar communications devices, since many probably tried early versions (they were truly horrible, large and ungainly) or instantly understood the negative “leash” aspects of the first “beepers,” that unmercifully tracked our every move, causing work to follower us into the woods and onto a boat, in an airplane and, seemingly, even underwater.

So, this book will be read in a passive way, by these individuals, with passing thoughts given to the core principles. It will another sort of brief entertainment to be shared among friends, then forgotten.

Pity. Yes, for these individuals, the book is undertitled: It never will have much applicability in their lives or deliver on its promised title. For them, the rules may have changed, but not the game. He re-defines the game and observes that the current rules may no longer apply. Pity not to grasp these seemingly obvious, pithy concepts.