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The Art of Seduction
A NEW ANGLE ON POWER FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING MASTER OF THE FORM 'Essential rules for the new Machiavellis' Daily Express 'Astonishing' The Times 'The modern Machiavelli' Daily Mail When raised to the level of art, seduction -…
- Release Date
- 2010
- Length
- 496 pages
- Publisher
- Profile Books
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Our Review
About the book
Robert Greene sorts seducers into archetypes, from the Siren and the Rake to the Charmer and the Coquette, and then lays out a step-by-step process for drawing a target in. Each lesson is built around historical anecdotes, with figures like Cleopatra, Casanova and Lord Byron serving as case studies in influence and desire.
Our review
A lavish, morally slippery catalog of charm that works best as social history and worst as a how-to manual.
Greene’s real gift is storytelling. He pulls a celebrated courtesan from the French court, a politician from postwar America and a film star from early Hollywood, then sets them side by side until a pattern emerges. The archetypes are fun to sort yourself into, and the margins full of historical sidebars give the book the feel of a strange encyclopedia. As a study of how attention, mystery and timing shape attraction, it is often shrewd and occasionally startling in its clarity.
The trouble is the framing. Greene treats people as targets and seduction as a campaign, and his advice drifts quickly from understanding desire to engineering it, with manipulation presented as a neutral craft. At over four hundred pages, the repetition also wears on us; many chapters restate the same principle with a fresh costume. Read it the way you might read Machiavelli, as a window into power, and keep a skeptical eye on anyone quoting it as a dating playbook.
What we loved
- The sheer range of historical anecdotes, from royal courts to Hollywood
- Archetypes that make abstract ideas about charm concrete and memorable
- Sharp observations about how mystery and absence create interest
Keep in mind
- The manipulative framing treats partners as targets, which many readers will find off-putting
- It is long and repetitive, with several chapters circling the same idea
Read it if you like
Fans of The 48 Laws of Power, readers of Dangerous Liaisons, or anyone curious about the history of charisma.
The verdict
Entertaining as a gallery of historical charmers and ethically shaky as advice; we recommend it for the stories, not the strategy.
