Word: ringers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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They are publishing's new odd couple. Columbus-born Robert Ringer, 37, is a brash college dropout and hard-boiled hustler who roars his Honda 750 through Los Angeles' swooping canyons...
...Ringer's Winning Through Intimidation is No. 5 on the Publisher's Weekly bestseller's list, one rung above Korda's Power...
Korda dispenses breezy bits of office one-upmanship (jam a visitor's chair into a small space to make him feel powerless, speak softly to an elderly rival -it may make him think he is going deaf). Ringer's book is a heady parable of the worm (himself) who turned predator and earned a spectacular $849,901 in a single year of real estate wheeling and dealing. Despite the differences in style, the message is the same: death will come soon; meanwhile, there is nothing left to believe in but success and power in a cruel world...
Intimidation draws salesmen and Ringer's fellow graduates of "Screw U.," his updated term for the School of Hard Knocks. Brentano's, a bookstore chain that promotes Intimidation heavily, says the book is moving fast in all its stores...
Both books are cashing in on the nation's current mood of disillusionment and individual helplessness, which social scientists see as the sour product of the recession and the dashed hopes of the 1960s. In insisting that hard work will get you nowhere, Korda and Ringer are preaching to a growing number of converts. Says Paula Landau, consultant for an "assertion" training group in North Hollywood, Calif: "There is an unprecedented feeling of loss of control. The middle class is losing out, and they know it." According to U.C.L.A. Psychologist Manuel Smith, author of the self-assertion bestseller When...