How to Lose Friends and Alienate People [Paperback]

Toby Young (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316857912
• ISBN-13: 978-0316857918
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,025,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I tried to enter some facts about myself here, but every time I hit "Save Changes" I got an error message saying, "The text entered may not contain profanity." It didn't, but no matter how many suspect words I deleted, I got the same error message. I guess my life is such a godawful mess, that merely trying to describe it constitutes a "profanity". If anyone's interested, they can check out my Wikipedia entry.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bitter, sad, occasionally hilarious but never boring, July 13, 2002

By 

David Ljunggren (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

It is very rare these days that I find a book engrossing enough to read in one sitting and which also makes me laugh out loud. Toby Young, who has an unerring ability to focus on his own shortcomings, does an excellent job of explaining exactly how not to get on in New York. His waggish personality, a healthy appetite for drink and a large stock of off-colour jokes -- all attributes which would serve you well as a journalist in London -- ensure he makes a total mess of pretty much everything he does in Manhattan, the mothership of all that is politically correct in the United States. Indeed, when Vanity Fair boss Graydon Carter fires Young, he tells our hapless hero that he has a brown thumb. "Everything you touch turns to ****," he explains with a laugh. Young is the squarest of pegs in a world where all the holes are round and to make matters worse, a friend of his who went to Los Angeles at the same time strikes immediate and lucrative success. Young is also very funny about his total lack of success with American women, largely because they quickly realise he is broke (and has quite a few complexes, as well as an impressively large collection of appalling pick-up lines). Two-thirds of the way through, the book suddenly becomes more serious as Young realises he has hit rock bottom and starts groping for a way out. To say much more would give too much away but it's well worth sticking through to the end.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plausible, cunning, literary: Brit humor at its driest, July 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

What a clever book. Ignore the provocative title - Brits are trained from birth to jettison friends and loved ones and skilled alienation is in their DNA. (I think it's also stipulated in the Magna Carta).

This is the witty memoir to jolt us out of Alertness Fatigue and all the government-induced 9/11 jitters essential to keep us focused on Saddam-bashing.

Here's this self-effacing Brit arriving in the Big Bagel to take Condé Nast by storm and canoodle with the celebs - and he totally flubs it on every front. Any self-respecting dude would pack up and go sell matches down Nacogdoches way, but not them blue-bloods. The Honorable Toby Young pauses only to fire up the word processor and - shazam - he's got a hot book out of it that also wreaks hilarious revenge on those who rejoiced in his downfall in the first place.

The book amuses wherever it falls open: the list of words banned by the Canuck airforce brat editor of 'Vanity Fair', Graydon 'Powerstrut' Carter; Young's brilliant idea for an profile of ubiquitous partygoer Jay McInerney as a notorious recluse à la Salinger or Pynchon; belletrist GW's winning way with the "clipboard Nazis" at the Bowery Bar; the major babes in the C-Nast elevators, sizing each other up "with the cold-blooded hostility of professional athletes", pouncing on any perceived fashion disaster with disapproving comments ranging "from the fairly mild - 'Aggressive choice!' - to the outright rude - 'It ain't working, honey.'"

"Alienate" abounds in such gems, delivered with a sure pen and sharpest ear and with that killer diffidence that makes your upper class Oxford type so dangerous to turn one's back on.

Nor is it just a catalog of TY's pathetic inability to bed any of this great country's Grade 1 beauties. Just when you think he's clowning, out comes Tocqueville from the bottom of the
deck and it's spot-on stuff - like that famed observation that "I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America." Ouch, but also let him try mouthing that around the 'Lonely Pines Grill & Bar' ...

Don't take my word for it: check out "HLFAP" at the library or your local brick n mortar and see if you can stop browsing or grinning. Nice one, Mister Young.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gossip and philosophy, all in one fun read, July 2, 2002

By 

FizzyBlonde - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

Toby Young manages to combine gossip, farce and social commentary in one terrifically well written book. While he makes sport of many famous media folk, he doesn't spare himself. This book reads like a primer on how NOT to behave in media circles, with many laugh out loud passages detailing Young's spectacular social and professional blunders. If you are extremely politically correct, this is not the book for you. And if you take offense at any critiques of the American way of life, you won't exactly see eye to eye with Young. I found the book insightful and refreshing, especially during this period of too often blind patriotism. Young writes about Graydon Carter and Alexis deTocqueville with equal facility, and manages to make all of it interesting. You start out thinking Young is a big jerk, but by the end, he's won you over.