The Game

The cover of Neil Strauss' famous book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists looks just like the opening scenes of a James Bond movie: Silhouettes of sultry women wearing high heels and posing seductively for a dapper looking man.

What better role model than Secret Agent 007 to exemplify a man who is effortlessly successful with beautiful women wherever he goes and whatever he does.

Strauss' 2005 book on how to pick up women seemed to instantly garner sales and favorable word-of-mouth men from around the world turned to his book for advice on becoming successful with women.

It didn't take long for The Game to become a New York Times bestseller. The first few pages of the book include a quote by a famous author, Dostoyevsky, which in essence (and irony) says how any man is capable of becoming anything he wants to be. The quote is actually a call to action for men to get off their butts and do something about their situation (as men who aren't attracting women):

"I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something." ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

This call to action quote is followed by the claim by author Neil Strauss that everything in his book is the truth. It all really happened to the guys he writes about and that it can happen for anyone else who reads the book.

The book is laid out in a series of steps that men can take to learn how to successfully attract women with ease:
The first step is to "Select a Target."
The second step is to "Approach and Open."
The third step is to "Demonstrate Value."
The fourth step is to "Disarm the Obstacles."
The fifth step is to "Isolate the Target."
The sixth step is to "Create an Emotional Connection."
The seventh step is to "Extract to a Seduction Location."
The eighth step is to "Pump Buying Temperature."
The ninth step is to "Make a Physical Connection."
The tenth step is to "Blast Last-Minute Resistance."
The eleventh step is to "Manage Expectations."

Each step has explicit directions and explanations on how to achieve that goal and move onto the next step.

The book is replete with fabulous illustrations and entertaining stories about how Neil Strauss and his posse of fellow pick up artists lived sprawled in fantastic mansions from coast to coast, picking up women, and living a life, most men only dream about.

Strauss, who had previously only been known by his alias, "Style" starts the book with an intriguing well-told tale about helping talk his distraught mentor, Mystery (Of the famous The Mystery Method books who Strauss dubbed the greatest pickup artist in the world) off the metaphorical cliff by attempting to check him into a Los Angeles mental facility.

Mystery attempted to run away, but Strauss brought him back and placed him in front of a cute Asian therapist.

You'll have to read more to find out what happens to Mystery, but the real story is Strauss and his own journey as he looks at how he became one of the greatest pickup artists in the world, just like his mentor, Mystery.

His path is not only educational, but also entertaining as readers learn about his encounters with celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and Britney Spears.

The book even contains a glossary of pick up artist terms, such as the following:
• AFC – which stands for average frustrated chump
• AMOG — alpha male of the group
• ASD — anti-slut defense
• BF — boyfriend
• Caveman — which means to be aggressive in physical contact with sex as the end goal
• The Three-Second Rule — which states that a guy needs to approach a girl within three seconds of noticing her

The amazing part about this glossary is that all of these terms, which fill several pages in the book, are part of the common vernacular of people studying in the seduction community. Men who are learning how to pick up women already use these words that now have become part of the lingo.