Norman Vincent Peale published it in 1952, and it stayed on the bestseller lists for years. It is one of the most widely sold books in American publishing history. The title is an argument: that thinking has power, and that the direction of the thinking determines what follows.
books
Bright-Sided
Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2009 book attacked American positive thinking as a coercive ideology — one that makes suffering the fault of the sufferer and turns compulsory cheerfulness into a workplace requirement.
It was widely read and widely argued with. The critique is evidence for the thing it criticizes: no other culture needed a book like this.
Fixed book prices
Die Buchpreisbindung. German law fixes the retail price of books. Every shop sells the same title at the same price, and the publisher sets it. The price is treated as a property of the book rather than of the transaction.
Win-win
Stephen Covey made it one of the seven habits in 1989 and the phrase became ordinary American business speech. The claim inside it is that a negotiation is a joint problem, and the vocabulary carried the claim into general use.
Critique of Pure Reason
Kant’s project in 1781 was not to reach conclusions about the world. It was to examine the instrument first — to establish what reason can and cannot validly do, before using it.
Critique, in his title, does not mean criticism. It means examining the apparatus.
The most influential work in German philosophy is an inspection of the method, carried out before the work begins.
Getting to Yes
Fisher and Ury published it in 1981, out of the Harvard Negotiation Project. It has sold millions of copies and its vocabulary — interests not positions, BATNA, objective criteria — is now ordinary American business language. A method for reaching agreement became a mass-market American bestseller.
Built to last
The phrase exists in American English as praise, and Collins and Porras made it a bestselling business book title in 1994 — about companies rather than products. When Americans reach for the phrase, they tend to apply it to institutions.
The matter-book
German splits books into Belletristik and Sachbuch. Fine writing, and matter-book.
English calls the second category non-fiction — defined by what it is not. German names it for what it contains.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie published it in 1936. It has sold tens of millions of copies and has never been out of print. Its argument is that business outcomes follow from how people feel about you, and its instructions are about attention, names, listening and genuine interest. An American business classic is a book about liking.
Reengineering the Corporation
Hammer and Champy, 1993. One of the bestselling American business books ever published, and its instruction was to stop improving existing processes and abolish them. The subtitle was a manifesto for business revolution. Millions of American managers bought a book telling them their processes were the problem.