How to win friends and influence people in ancient China

The way Stephen Selby tells it, Guiguzi (鬼谷子) sounds like the ancient Chinese version of Dale Carnegie’s enduring self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Given its contents and message, it should have been a text for the ages. After all, whether ancient, modern, postmodern, Eastern or Western, many of us still need to kiss up to wayward bosses and stroke their egos if we want to advance our careers – not to mention ancient despots who could chop off your head for saying the...