[jfyi]

> the main crowd are wannabe master manipulators. also, they can often be distilled to a couple chapters, not sure why they're so long.

Yes! Very similar to my own criticisms. It's thinly veiled authoritarianism. Nobody handing you one of these books is ever doing it for your benefit despite framing it that way. The message always is, "this is the behavior I expect out of you".

As to the content density, they all tend to ape Dale Carnegie's work. Carnegie himself borrowing heavily from Ben Franklin, who actually had a lifetime of interesting anecdotes. If you don't have that, you spin out 80 pages worth of filler.