My girlfriend has a copy of Dale Carnegie's infamous book How to win friends and influence people. She got it on a training course that she attended with another 100 or so people. (This bulk buying might go some way to explaining the huge sales for the book.)

At the end of the course it was compulsory to give a speech to all the other trainees saying how much the book had benefited you (if you wanted to pass). Her description of this reminded me of the techniques used by some cults. Unsurprisingly, very few people chose to challenge the instructors in front of a large audience and reveal what they really thought about the book, thinking instead about their future promotion prospects.

The book itself seems to be fairly heavy with platitudes and I think I would need to master more motivational techniques to read more than the page I managed. Perhaps a motivational book would help?