about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, culti- vating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing about Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences. WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT? This description is bad because—based just on this description—the book seems somewhat bland and boring. If I don’t know anything about Horowitz before I read that description, what in there makes me want to know more? Nor does it really tell me anything about the substance of what he says in the book, and it substantially undersells both Horowitz’s prominence and the resonance and importance of the book’s message. And who cares that he likes rap? What does that matter to me, the reader? Compare this with the description for Tyler Cowen’s book above; it explains who Cowen is and why I should care, it tells me what he says, applies the book to my life, and shows me exactly why I need to care about what he wrote. The irony is that having read both books, I can tell you that Horowitz’s is just as good, if not better than Cowen’s. But you would never know this from comparing the descriptions. DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF’S COERCION: WHY WE LISTEN TO WHAT “THEY” SAY Noted media pundit and author of Playing the Future Douglas Rush- koff gives a devastating critique of the influence techniques behind our culture of rampant consumerism. With a skilled analysis of how experts in the fields of marketing, advertising, retail atmospherics, and hand-selling attempt to take away our ability to make rational hOW TO WriTE A BOOk DESCriPTiON ThAT SEllS · 249