[mindcrime]

I can think of a handful of books that have had a major impact on me. Off the top of my head:

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

The Game - Neil Strauss

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank

Business @ The Speed of Thought - Bill Gates

The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

[atgm]

The Game is an interesting book for a lot of reasons; I don't agree with the idea of picking up tons of random women or some of the methodology he espouses, but it's a powerful book for making people sit up and realize that yes, you can change your life, and yes, you have the tools to do it. It says that "Hey, people think in certain ways and you can hack that," which may be the first time a lot of people encounter any kind of social engineering.

[mindcrime]

Yeah, I'm not trying to be a big-time PUA or anything either. But as a guy who was the stereotypical geek in at least one regard - being horrible at meeting and interacting with women - I've learned a ton since reading The Game and joining some of the PUA forums and reading some of their material.

I've gotten more dates and had more success in the past year and a half than I probably had in my life up to that point.

Truth be told though, I think it's as much "magic sword" syndrome as anything. I big part of being successful with women is confidence, as we've all been told. Unfortunately you can't just tell somebody "go out and be confident with women" if they're not confident with women! But you can say "Here, here's this opener and some routines and some theories about attraction, and if you use this stuff you'll be successful" which gives them a certain form of confidence, which leads to some success, which leads to more confidence, etc. I look at it as way to kick off a positive feedback loop. Sorta like giving a young knight a "magic sword" to give him the confidence to go out and slay dragons.

Whether there's really much to the actual theories and what-not is debatable, but I have no doubt that dabbling in the PUA world has improved my life. And The Game was my "gateway drug" into that world, so it was definitely an influential book to me.