Three hundred and sixty short chapters on persuasion, deception detection, coercion and the defenses against them. Each one is built around a specific published study or documented case, and cites it.
12 parts, 360 chapters, 1077 cited sources. You have read 0, 0% of the guide.
Four parts on how influence works at the level of the individual mind and body. These are the mechanisms — compliance triggers, nonverbal behavior, language, and interrogation — and every case study in the rest of the guide is an instance of something described here.
1 The Architecture of Persuasion The compliance mechanisms everything later in the guide is built from — reciprocity, scarcity, authority, social proof, commitment, and the cognitive levers that carry them. 2 Reading the Body What the body actually gives away, what it does not, and the popular claims about reading people that fail replication. 3 The Weaponized Word Language as an instrument: framing, loaded words, propaganda grammar, euphemism, and the rhetorical moves that make a bad argument hard to answer. 4 Extracting the Truth How states and police get people to talk — the techniques that produce false confessions, and the small number of interview methods that beat chance.Five parts of documented cases, from single confidence tricksters to states. The mechanics tier tells you what the levers are; this tier shows them being pulled, at every scale, by people whose methods are on the record.
5 The Individual Operator Thirty confidence tricks that worked, from Ponzi to the Tinder Swindler, each read for the mechanism underneath the story. 6 Charisma and Control How coercive movements recruit, bind and keep people, documented from the inside of a dozen of them. 7 The Throne and the Lie Power as practiced: the playbooks, the propaganda ministries, and the rulers who wrote down what they were doing. 8 Nations at Play Deception at the scale of states — wartime cover plans, active measures, covert programs, and the modern disinformation machinery. 9 The Marketplace of Attention Where influence became an industry: public relations, manufactured doubt, engagement design, and the business models built on attention.One part, stated as thirty operating laws. This is the offense side written plainly, because a technique described only from the defender's point of view is a technique you will not recognize when it is used on you.
10 The Offense Codex Thirty techniques of applied influence stated as operating laws, each with its mechanism, its historical proof, and the point at which its use stops being persuasion.Two parts on the other side of the same thirty techniques, and on what comes after: detection protocols, counter-responses, the ethics of using any of this, the law that governs influence, and the clinical picture of recovery.
11 The Defense Codex The same thirty techniques from the other side — the early warning signature, the detection protocol, and the counter-response for each. 12 The Reckoning Consent, ethics and recovery: the law that governs influence, what repair after coercive control actually involves, and the synthesis at the end.Shorter paths through the material, grouped by the situation you are trying to handle.
Thirty influence techniques set against the published counter to each.
Work out which chapters apply to something happening now, or check whether you can name a technique from its description.